The link between Science and Religion in Islam

245)More excerpts and quotes by Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, in Uganda(Aga Khan Academy), relating to intellect, creation, science and religion.

2007-08-22T11:11:00.000-05:00

Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of the Aga Khan Academy, Kampala, Uganda – 22 August 2007:

"......The Quran tells us that signs of Allah’s Sovereignty are found in the contemplation of His Creation - in the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the clouds and the seas, the winds and the waters. I am confident that future generations of students and teachers - who will come to this Academy from around the region and around the world - will feel a profound sense of inspiration as they look out on this superb landscape.

As you have heard, the new Academy in Kampala will be one of 18 Academies in 14 countries which will be developed over the next 15 years. Together, they will constitute an inter-related community of learning - exchanging students and teachers, sharing ideas and insights. And they will also share a variety of environmental experiences. Some, like the first Academy at Mombasa, will be in ocean-side settings, other will be placed in high mountain environments, still others will be built in desert terrains or forested areas - or, as in Kampala, at the side of a beautiful lake. As our students and teachers experience these remarkable surroundings, I hope they will develop what I would call a sense of “environmental pluralism”- to accompany the appreciation for cultural pluralism which we will also hope will be one of the programme’s hallmarks.......

.........A strong commitment to learning has been at the very root of Ismaili and Islamic culture, going back to the first Imam of the Shia Muslims, the fourth Caliph, Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib, and his emphasis on knowledge. The tradition was renewed over many centuries in many places by the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Safavids – the Mughals, the Uzbeks and the Ottomans. During his Imamat, my late Grandfather started some 300 schools in this region. The Academies Programme is thus planted in rich historic soil........

.........One of the central precepts of the International Baccalaureate Programme is to honour world-class standards, while also respecting cultural diversity. In this respect, its approach mirrors that of the Aga Khan Academies - to help students combine a cosmopolitan spirit on the one hand, with a strong sense of cultural identity on the other........

...........This is why so many of the long-term investments we have been making, throughout the developing world, are investments in education. They have ranged from Madrasa programmes for early childhood development, to primary schools in disadvantaged communities, to leadership training programmes and scholarships for promising young professionals. At the tertiary level, we have recently launched the University of Central Asia. This is an international agreement between Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and the Ismaili Imamat to create a new institution of higher learning specialised in mountain societies. And, as you may know, we are also planning to expand the Aga Khan University - founded almost 25 years ago in Pakistan - and now an active presence in nine different countries. Just this week, the Aga Khan University announced its plans for a new Faculty of Health Sciences in Nairobi, as well as a major new East African campus in Arusha.

All of our initiatives are built around a pragmatic, experience-based, and innovative approach to education - an effort to refresh and replace narrower approaches which have sometimes mis-served the developing world. Education, in the past, has too often been a matter of indoctrination - advancing the demands of dogma instead of the disciplines of reason.

What is required today, in my view, is an educational approach which is the polar opposite of indoctrination - one that nurtures the spirit of anticipation and agility, adaptability and adventure.

To this end, the Academies curriculum will encourage its students in the practice of what I would call “Intellectual Humility, “ recognizing that what they do not know will always be greater than what they know - and launching an ardent, lifelong search for the knowledge they will need. In an age of accelerating change, the most important thing any student can learn is how to go on learning.........

...........We look forward to working with the government and the people of Uganda as we pursue these great objectives. I know we will all remember this important ceremony at this beautiful place as a special moment in this process. Again, we are most grateful to all of you for sharing it with us."

http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug22.htm

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

244)Selected quotes from Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV's current East African visit, Aug 12-23 2007, that are relevant to the title of my blogsite.

2007-08-21T13:15:00.000-05:00

1)Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Madrasa Programme, Mombasa – 14 August 2007:

".......A deep concern for Knowledge - and the best ways of sharing Knowledge - goes back to the very roots of the Islamic tradition. When we think of our proud educational traditions, however, we often think first about the great Universities and Libraries which became centers of Islamic culture down through the centuries - including in our time the Aga Khan University which now has teaching centres in eight different countries. Or we think of schools which prepare students for university life - as our Aga Khan Academy programme is designed to do.

But we sometimes give too little attention to the schools which prepare young children for life itself - in all of its holistic dimensions. And yet the evidence accumulates steadily showing that an investment made in the earliest, pre-school years can bring enormous dividends as a child proceeds from one level of education to another.

We have particularly strong evidence that this has been the case for the Madrasa programme in this community - and in the other communities and the other countries to which these concepts now have spread. From the seed that was planted here in the Coastal Region some 25 years ago - when Bi-Swafiya Said received her grant from the Aga Khan Foundation - the East African Madrasa Programme has grown to include 203 pre-schools, with nearly 800 teachers, reaching some 30,000 households and serving more than 54,000 children. This is truly an inspiring story.

It is also important to note some additional distinctions concerning this program. One is the Programme’s pluralistic, inclusive approach - embracing Muslim and non-Muslim children alike – and helping all of them to learn important lessons about diversity. Indeed, it is good to see that parents of different faiths are represented on the School Management Committees.

It is striking that modern neuro-sciences have demonstrated that long before the age of 6, children are aware of the different cultural backgrounds amongst each other in their classes. It is thus before that age that pluralism can be instilled as a life value........"

http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug14_madrasa.htm

2)Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Inauguration of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University,Nairobi, Kenya – 13 August 2007:

".........A golden jubilee is a valuable opportunity for putting the present into historical perspective. In that spirit, I would begin today by emphasizing how my concern for education grows intimately out of my family history. It was just a century ago that my late Grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions which would eventually include some 300 schools, many of them in East Africa.

My late Grandfather, who was also the founding figure of Aligarh University in India, was renewing a tradition which stretches back over 1000 years, to our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, who founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. And going back even further, I would cite the words of the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, Hazrat Ali Ibn Abi Talib, who emphasized in his teachings that “No honour is like knowledge.”.........":

http://www.akdn.org/speeches/2007Aug14_fhs.htm

The quote from Hazrat Ali comes from a speech given by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the Tutzing Evangelical Academy in Germany, upon receiving the Tolerance Award, May 20th 2006:

I cite Hazrat Ali's words....: "No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation". Hazrat Ali's regard for knowledge reinforces the compatibility of faith and knowledge. And his respect for consultation is, in my view, a commitment to tolerant and open-hearted democratic processes(Aga Khan IV)

http://www.akdn.org/speeches/200506_Tutzing.htm

I wrote a piece on the uninterrupted thread of the search for knowledge in Shia Ismaili Islam here:
http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/135the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html

3)Other quotes and speech excerpts that fall into the same category of knowledge, science, creation, intellect and religion:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/213the-creation-according-to-prophet.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/208selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/129quotes-of-aga-khan-4-consolidated.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/133timeless-sayings-of-aga-khan-iii.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/08/234heartiest-mubarak-to-all-ismailis-in.html

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

243)Aga Khan Development Network and The Ismaili websites have an excellent exposition of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV's East African visit so far.

2007-08-21T05:29:00.000-05:00

Two of our three official Shia Ismaili Muslim websites, those of the Aga Khan Development Network and The Ismaili, have laid out clearly and methodically the sequence of events, accompanied by marvellous sequential picture collages, relating to the visit of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV(August 12-23 2007), to East Africa so far:

http://www.akdn.org/

http://www.akdn.org/news/2007ea.htm

http://www.theismaili.org/

The Ismaili Mail website has also reported extensively upon this visit and other related articles:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

242)A Shia Ismaili Muslim cosmological exposition from the pre- to early Fatimid era(10th century CE).

2007-08-20T21:15:00.000-05:00

Excerpt from the book "Abu Yakub al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary", written by Paul Walker, historian of ideas currently affiliated with the University of Chicago; published by the Institute Of Ismaili Studies, 1996:

In defense of the link between science and religion(my words):

"For al-Sijistani, the truth is known and its roots are four. Between God and the individual human thinker, there are exactly four sources that provide truth, that define and give meaning to existence and that keep the whole universe-from the smallest particle to the grandest creation-in place and continuing to do what each was intended to do. These four are the pillars for the architecture of the intelligible universe as he, and the Ismailis who followed him, saw it. His vision is thus comprehensive and inclusive. Studying al-Sijistani's thought is inherently interesting if only for the breadth of his aspirations and the complexity of his way of viewing the structure of truth.

The four wellsprings, then, are in descending order of rank: first, the intellect, which in other terms could be called universal reason or the mind; second, soul and, third, legislating prophecy, these latter two occupying parallel but distinct positions; and, finally, at the base, in fourth place, the Founder of interpretation.The preceding approach is, of course, rather abstract. In more ordinary terms the four wellsprings are intellect, soul, Speaking-prophet and his executor. In the Islamic period, the latter two are the Prophet Muhammad and Ali ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and successor. In another, earlier, era they would have been the founding prophet, as for example, Moses or Jesus, and an executor for the religions instigated by each in turn.

Of the four wellsprings, intellect is the least comprehensible in modern terms; it was the most abstract even for the Neoplatonists who accepted it as a philosophical principle. In strictly Ismaili language the intellect is more often called the Preceder(al-Sabic), a term which indicates its pre-eminent rank rather than what it is. Soul, which like intellect nears a name that both suggests what it is and yet might be confused with many other notions of soul, is also known as the Follower(al-Tali) to show its close association with intellect as the Preceder. Speaking-prophet is a translation of the Arabic word natiq. It denotes a special type of prophet who conveys God's revelation by composing a law. Other prophets might merely provide wisdom orally but not in written form. The latter function, as formally present in the system of roots, belongs to the Speaking-prophet's executor, the Founder, who is resposible for the creation of an explanatory teaching to accompany the written scripture.

Much more needs to be said about these four wellsprings. The details of what they do and how they do it forms, after all the basis both of religion and of science. Prior to that, however, it is useful to emphasize the structure of the system as a whole.

Significantly, God is not a member of this structure, nor for that matter is the divine command by which He initiates it and brings into being from nothing. Discussions that concern either God or the divine command fall outside intellectual reality and are not, therefore, a subject for science. What can and should be said must be dealt with separately.The system itself with its four foundations does not have a visual image, nor should it. Intellect is, as it were, more encompassing than the others. Soul and Speaking-prophet function at a lower rank each parallel to the other and, at the base, the Founder is literally the point of contact for ordinary mortals. He is their primary means of access to the system as a whole.

Al-Sijistani employs four Arabic terms for the roots which are each a part of a technical vocabulary designed to explain the respective functions of these four source. They are 'tayid', 'tarkib', 'talif' and 'tawil'. These terms belong, in all likelihood, primarily to the Ismaili tradition and not to philosophy. Each has an origin in Quranic materials. 'Tayid' means to provide support, corroboration, inspiration, or an infusion of spirit. Jesus, as an example, is, according to the Quran, 'infused with the holy spirit'(muayyad bil-ruh al-quds). 'Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. 'Talif' is composition in another sense; it is to compile words into a scripture or a religious law, to compose as in writing, that is, to add together words in order to express complex meanings. Finally, 'tawil' is interpretation.

The four roots are each responsible for one of these four functions. Intellect controls 'tayid'; it inspires. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. The Speaking-prophet, similarly, composes scripture and creates law, the act of 'talif'. The Founder interprets('tawil') what the others compose.Note how the four functions are related. The infusion or inspiration of intellect stands at the top; all beings below it receive its benefits, though some in greater proportion than others. The two parallel sources, soul and Speaking-prophet, as the sources closest to intellect, most perfectly acquire that benefit. They are as infused with reason as any being can be that is not itself pure intellect. Since there is no other intellect, they are as near to perfect as possible. Both of these parallel sources act on what is less than they by incorporating what they have received from intellect. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it. The Speaking-prophet creates law and law is an embodiment of reason; the scripture of a messenger-prophet is therefore an incorporation of intellect also.

At the base of the system, a slight alteration occurs. Each of the higher three forces influence the lower ones. They instil the benefits that they each provide downward through the system until reaching the base. The Founder, from the bottom, so to speak, looks upward. The Founder must direct the thoughts of creatures upward and must guide them in reverse. The function of 'tawil' is to move back up the system, to 'un-incorporate' what has become physical by removing its body and finding the spiritual reality of its origin.

In his book 'The Wellsprings', al-Sijistani offers a stunning- all the more so for being ecumenical -iconic image of this system of roots. The Christian cross, he says, resembles the four points defined by the four roots. At its base fastened in the ground is the Founder, its foundation, the symbolic access for ordinary humans. Above to the left and to the right are the associated members, soul and Speaking-prophet. At the top is the intellect."

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

241)Lets play a game of catch up in cyberspace; our futures could depend on it.

2007-08-19T14:24:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting article that appears in Saturday's Globe and Mail and it shows how far ahead in the cybergame jihadists really are. Clearly there is a lot of catching up to do by non-jihadist cyberplayers, the like-minded group of websites and blogsites that I feel I and the ones I link to are operating at the present time.

Speaking specifically in reference to Shia Ismaili Islam, North America is very well represented, with websites like Ismaili Mail(Illinois), Ismaili Web(Texas and California), Ismaili Heritage Net(Western Canada) and blogsites like Easynash(Toronto, Ontario), Jalaledin(California), Ismailiworld(God knows where), etc. The official Shia Ismaili Muslim websites are based in England, France and Switzerland.

We need many more individual bloggers from more disparate parts of the world, esp, Pakistan, Central Asia, India, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, parts of the Middle East, Western China, even South America(not a day goes by when my blog is not visited by readers from somewhere in South America). We need even more from North America and Europe. We need about two to three thousand bloggers worldwide to be blogging 2 or 3 times a week on a topic of interest relating to Islam and Shia Ismaili Islam. We especially need a dedicated blog or three by someone very knowledgeable in the ginans of the Ismaili Pirs, someone who can bring us to a better understanding of the highest order knowledge that this corpus represents:

MIND FIELD: Terror goes digital. With Canadian help

Across the Internet, extremist Islamist propaganda is circulating to alienated, Western-born kids, trying to foster potential 'homegrown terrorists.' In Nova Scotia, a web-domain registration service unintentionally helps these terror proponents hide their tracks. Police, spies and lawyers are hamstrung: How to fight back without risking everyone's civil liberties?

Omar El Akkad reports
OMAR EL AKKAD
The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
August 18, 2007

Welcome to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia - pivotal battleground in the global jihad.

The town of 7,000 doesn't look the part. Its quietly beautiful downtown lives and dies by tourists. The coastline puts postcards to shame. The New York Islanders have held their training camp here for the past two years. But unwittingly, Yarmouth has become an example of the sort of unassuming places that are serving as relay stations in a virtual war.

The town is home to a branch of Register.com, one of its largest employers and one of the most popular Internet domain-name registration services in the world. For a fee, the company allows users to register website names - the .com, .net or .org addresses you type into your web browser to surf the Internet. Normally, when anyone signs up new domains, they have to provide a name, address and contact information, all of which become publicly available to anyone who's even remotely net-savvy. (The information is copied to one of the central databases that form the backbone of the Internet, to ensure there are no conflicts, such as two separate entities owning the same domain.) But for a few extra dollars, Register.com also offers an anonymous registration service: Try to find out who registered any one of these websites, and you'll be handed the same address and phone number in Yarmouth.

This service is hugely popular: Civil-liberties advocates and anyone else who values their privacy flock to it. But it's also very useful to another group of people, halfway around the globe: On one of the world's largest pro-Hamas websites, viewers can download martyrdom videos that feature the diatribes of masked men shortly before they launch deadly attacks. Look up the registration info for that site, and you'll get that Yarmouth address and phone number.

The challenge this situation poses is not unprecedented. Years ago, authorities noticed that child pornography websites, though often operated from outside North America, made use of North American anonymous-registration services. In response, a large number of watchdog groups began hunting down such sites to force the registration firms to shut them down.

"There's nothing near that level [of public monitoring] with terrorist websites," says Wade Deisman, Director of the National Security Working Group at the University of Ottawa. Government intelligence services don't have the resources to manage the scale of the problem. "I haven't seen anything that comes even close to addressing this issue," he says.

The FBI estimates somewhere in the range of 6,000 terrorism-supporting websites are currently active. Last week, the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies published a report stating that, in terms of nefarious online activity, terrorism promotion had eclipsed hatemongering.

This is the new jihad - the evolution of a propaganda effort that, just a decade ago, consisted mostly of Osama bin Laden speeches on video tapes smuggled out of a hideout in Afghanistan. Today, the public-relations arms of terrorist organizations - run less by grizzled warriors than by 20-something computer geeks - deal in digital currency, getting their messages out instantly and universally using the scope and anonymity of the web.

The process is borderless. A beheading video moves from a hideout in Peshawar to a server in London to a computer screen in Toronto unhindered, fuelling a global radicalization juggernaut that intelligence agencies describe as perhaps the biggest threat facing the West today.

All manner of video, audio and even interactive propaganda have found an audience among many disaffected Muslim youth around the world. But while the majority of people who download such content may only fuel a passive resentment of the West, for others the audiovisual diatribes of Mr. bin Laden and his kin have served as a sort of gateway drug to a more violent worldview. That was the case among some of the alleged ringleaders of the Toronto terrorist group arrested during a sweep last summer - a trail led from some of those arrested to a massive, and now defunct, web forum where angry youth traded incendiary content.

In another case, a young British man named Younis Tsouli was arrested in England in 2005 and charged with "conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, conspiracy to obtain money by deception, fundraising and possession of articles for terrorist purposes." Mr. Tsouli, now 23, had never so much as fired a rifle - his agitation was purely online. The computer hacker got his start moving propaganda videos around the web for al-Qaeda in Iraq and soon popped up in connection with at least three alleged terrorist plots, including one in Canada. For Mr. Tsouli, it was not a great stretch from posting beheading videos to sending out suicide-bomb-belt manuals.

Besides the anonymous registries, many effective terrorist-propaganda producers rely on the hugely popular public blogging and file-sharing sites used by millions to rant about their bosses and share barbecue recipes. That leaves law-enforcement officials in the uncomfortable position of trying to catch a wisp of an enemy without trampling on everyone else's civil liberties.

And so a battle rages in Ottawa, as Canadian police and spy agencies complain that the legislation governing online crime is a historical relic. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, fear a world where every 0 and 1 is visible to Big Brother.

Meanwhile, terrorist propaganda operations have come to rival the PR departments of multinational corporations, complete with publishing houses, movie-editing studios and video-game developers. This is the ammunition in a battle of ideas that all sides agree may end up being more important than any blood-and-bullets conflict - a battle that, so far, the West is losing.

Al-Qaeda's spin doctor

It started with a single memo, dated June 20, 2000. Abu Huthayfa, a member of al-Qaeda's inner circle, was writing to his mentor, Osama bin Laden, about the importance of public relations. The writer was struck by some of the tactics already in use by Hamas, especially the practice of videotaping statements of soon-to-be "martyrs." A year earlier, the Al Jazeera television network had aired an interview with Mr. bin Laden, and the public response convinced Mr. Huthayfa that there were many people around the world hanging on the soft-spoken Saudi's every word.

He asked his leader, why wasn't al-Qaeda taking better advantage? Why was it that two years after the U.S. embassy bombings in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, many people knew little about "the heroes of this magnificent undertaking"?

Abu Huthayfa's solution to al-Qaeda's PR shortfalls would serve as the foundation for the single most important advance in the terrorist group's history. He proposed the creation of a separate informational branch of al-Qaeda. At the time, the group's communiqués flowed freely around much of Afghanistan, but that was a form of preaching to the converted - elsewhere in the world, al-Qaeda was still a small fish.

To remedy this, Mr. Huthayfa set his sights on the Internet, especially e-mail and file-sharing websites. He touted the advantages of instant communication, the massive amount of information that could be sent around the world in a blink.

"The importance of establishing a website for you on the Internet in which you place all your legible, audible, and visible archives and news must be emphasized," he wrote. "It should not escape the mind of any one of you the importance of this tool in communicating with people."
It didn't. Within a year, Mr. bin Laden would declare that up to 90 per cent of al-Qaeda's battles would be fought not with guns, but words and images. (The memo, recovered in a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout, is now a public document found on several terrorism-studies databases.)

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a flood of videos glorifying the carnage began appearing online. In many cases the producer was al-Sahab ("the Clouds"), the newly created media arm of al-Qaeda. The hijackers appeared superimposed over images of the planes crashing into New York's twin towers, reading their wills and issuing stern warnings to the U.S. This time, the propaganda opportunity would be fully exploited.

The post-9/11 videos showcased many of al-Qaeda's major talking points. Over and over, would-be martyrs and senior leaders glorified the attacks and the attackers - the idea of a fast-track to eternal paradise being a significant selling point for disaffected Muslim youth and other possible recruits. Another refrain was to warn of further attacks, citing a list of demands that combined legitimate and illegitimate grievances from across the Muslim world in a patchwork of outrage.

"If you look at the messaging and narrative, it's aimed at a Western audience," says Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, and a former special assistant on security to the president. "I look at al-Qaeda as a brand, and you have to look at what makes brands flourish - there has been a big improvement in use of symbols."

One of the most oft-repeated symbols is the Arabic word ummah, meaning "Muslim nation." Among many Muslims worldwide, it conjures halcyon images of a global empire ruled by religion, where borders of race, ethnicity and nationality are obliterated and the only common denominator is the word of God. But the ummah also has come to serve a second purpose, as justification for violence. If Muslims everywhere are one, the thinking goes, then a car bombing in Bali is a legitimate response to the killing of a child in Gaza.

In geographic reality, there is no ummah; perhaps the most recent attempt at one was the Ottoman empire. But from another view, there is perhaps the largest ummah in the history of Islam, composed of chat rooms and file servers from Islamabad to Antigua. In this cyber-ummah, race, ethnicity and nationality are invisible; the common denominator is the digitized word of God. There are segments of the cyber-ummah that have nothing to do with terrorism: Many mainstream Muslim youth groups in Canada use web forums. But, as with neo-Nazi and child-porn rings, the qualities that make Internet forums legitimately useful also empower the bad guys.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan scattered much of al-Qaeda's leadership - its literal Arabic name, "the base," was no longer apt. At that point, al-Qaeda morphed from a group into a mindset: Where there once was one well-defined organization, there sprung up dozens of relatively unconnected cells, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in London and Madrid. The founders of those cells were, in many cases, Western-born young men whose parents were immigrants but who had never set foot themselves in any war zone. Instead, this new generation of jihadis had grown up watching the fruits of al-Sahab's labour - the propaganda and martyrdom videos floating freely across the cyber-ummah.

"You have a group of individuals who are distanced from their parents; don't necessarily feel fully embedded in their current society, so they look to one another to reaffirm their attitudes," says Mr. Cilluffo. "It really goads the bravado."

A new generation has taken over the informational arm Abu Huthayfa suggested some seven years ago. As comfortable at the keyboard as the original mujahedeen were with rifles, they have swapped the grainy video of past terrorist communiqués for a far more polished product. But it wasn't only the form of the message that took a generational leap forward. The target demographic also had come into focus: young, angry, Western kids.

Joystick jihad

By almost any measure, Night of Capturing Bush is an unbelievably awful video game.
In the first-person shooter, released in September of last year, you play the role of a hardcore, AK47-toting Islamic warrior. Your goal is to mow down feeble, eerily identical U.S. troops in Iraqi settings - Iraq being composed mainly of various heavily pixilated shades of brown. The difficulty levels are skewed to the point where the cloned U.S. troops could unload entire armouries of bullets on you and still not make much of a dent. As war songs play in the background, you make your way through six levels, culminating, as the title suggests, in a showdown with U.S. President George W. Bush. (Ironically, Night of Capturing Bush is a minor modification of Quest for Saddam, an equally mediocre 2003 game from right-wing U.S. activist Jesse Petrilla.)

But glitchy game-play and atrocious graphics did little to hinder Night of Capturing Bush's primary purpose, which was strictly ideological. In a press release hyping the game, its creators, an anonymous group called the Global Islamic Media Front, dubbed their desired audience "terrorist children." Within a few hours of its release, across thousands of online message boards, these "terrorist children" passed the game back and forth. The Media Front only had to initiate the craze; thousands of sympathizers around the planet did the rest.

It wasn't the first time Islamic extremist propaganda fused with pop culture. Two years previous, a young British man calling himself Sheikh Terra stepped in front of a camera, his face covered, carrying what appeared to be a pistol, and began dancing. The resulting rap video was called Dirty Kuffar (Kuffar is an Arabic word for disbeliever).

Since its release, Dirty Kuffar has been downloaded onto millions of computers and remixed by many like-minded web jihadists. You can find it on video-sharing sites such as YouTube.
"I saw a number of video games. I saw rap videos with a very good tune to them," says Mr. Cilluffo. "I can't tell you for a fact we're certain who's designing what, but I can tell you that when it comes to technology and its application, I think the younger generation has a leg up."

One common method of disseminating anything from a terrorist video game to a bomb-making manual to a beheading video is to make copies available on dozens of free websites at the same time. On these sites, which were created to help people transfer data files too large to e-mail, anyone can quickly create an account - when barred by the administrators of one site, the user just jumps to another. By the time all such sites wise up, the message is all over the world.

On the Global Islamic Media Front site, each newly produced video is quickly uploaded to a dozen or more free sites. The Front's own site is not hosted on an obscure or secret server, but on Wordpress, one of the most widely used blogging services in the world. Because registering with a blogging site such as Wordpress doesn't require domain registration, there is no publicly accessible address or phone number.

That's likely the same thinking behind Press-Release, a website chock full of communiqués from "the Islamic State Of Iraq." There, users can download high-quality videos featuring attacks on U.S. military vehicles, as well as detailed listings of American casualties. Look up the registration info and you're handed an address in Mountain View, Calif. - far removed from the killing fields of Iraq, but near the headquarters of Google Inc., which owns the popular blogging domain Blogspot, on which "Press Release" is hosted.

Anonymity isn't enough, however. There's an intense emphasis on secrecy evident in the various password-protected forums and message boards where jihad-minded teens gather. One of the most widely visited extremist forums subscribes to the country-club model - the only way in is to have a current member vouch for you.

This security consciousness is in large part due to the new emphasis police and intelligence agencies are placing on infiltrating such forums. But today the level of infiltration is so high that intelligence agencies face a recurring problem: An agent goes undercover on a web forum and finds dozens of users making violent, extremists statements, but to the agent's dismay, it soon becomes apparent that many of them are undercover operatives from other intelligence agencies.

Joining the fray

Frank Cilluffo sat before a dozen or so of the most powerful politicians in the world last May and told them they should consider broadcasting footage of dead children to the public.

Mr. Cilluffo had been called before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee to talk about strategies for combatting online extremism. He presented a simple argument: Extremist videos often leverage footage of civilians killed by Israeli and U.S. troops. Why not show the world what happens to civilians - often Muslim civilians - when Islamic extremist groups carry out their attacks?

"I don't remember exactly [the committee's] response," Mr. Cilluffo recalls. "I think we did have some silence. It's a pretty provocative statement.

"The idea behind that was to take off any filters and demonstrate that the consequences of terror have a real impact: People are killed. This is not a theoretical set of issues."
The recommendation was part of a broader argument that if the U.S. government and its allies attempt to fight a war of ideas on their own, they're going to lose.

"Much of the solution comes from people with credibility in these constituencies, I don't think that can come from Western governments," Mr. Cilluffo says. "We need people who are versed in the Koran, who can show how it's being distorted. We need people who appreciate cultural nuances and norms. I think that governments have a role to play, but by no means the primary role."

What Mr. Cilluffo was pitching was the construction of a rival narrative to the one circulated in the cyber-ummah - one that would separate out the reasonable grievances from the specious ones circulated by extremists, and be delivered by someone credible. But his pitch wasn't an easy one to make, given that many Western governments, police and intelligence shops had long viewed the war on terror as just that - a war, which will be won or lost with old-fashioned techniques. Producing a rival message has been a low priority.

"This is the tip of a much bigger issue," says Mr. Deisman of the National Security Working Group in Ottawa. "The reason why we haven't matched the propaganda war is because we consider ourselves states characterized by tolerance and acceptance. For us to be saying what we stand for may be seen as infringing on someone else."

In England, where the problem of "homegrown terrorism" is far more urgent, Mr. Deisman points out the propaganda war has intensified: "England truly is an embattled country. The government is producing videos about what Englishness means," he says. "Can you imagine if we did that in Canada? People would be up in arms."

But even on the traditional counterterrorism front, law-enforcement officials are coming up against a major wall: For the most part, the legal system was not designed for cyberspace, as you can see by looking at the key case of the murder-conspiracy trial of Younis Tsouli in England this summer. Mr. Tsouli was alleged to have lived a double life on the Internet under the name "Irhabi007" (Irhabi means terrorist in Arabic), distributing tools of extremism. He had become one of the most important terrorism conduits in the world, and his trial marked a watershed moment in combatting cyber-crime.

However, in May, that trial hit an embarrassing bump. Justice Peter Openshaw, the supervising judge, turned to prosecutors and said: "The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a website is." A university professor was quickly brought into court to explain the Internet.

In the case of child pornography, Mr. Deisman points out, there was a lag of about five to seven years before independent groups began forming for the purpose of shutting illegal sites down. The delay might be equally long with terrorism sites.

"This stuff has happened so quickly," Mr. Deisman says. "Typically it takes a while to catch up."
In Canada, the onus is largely on the public to point out such websites - such as the pro-Hamas one registered in Yarmouth - to the domain-name firms.

Register.com is based in New York but has offices in many places; the municipality and province provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in perks to convince it to locate operations in Yarmouth. And it has a very specific policy for dealing with cases where someone reports a domain being used for illegal purposes.

"This policy includes reviewing the content to determine the validity of the report and, if applicable, disabling the domain and notifying the customer of the reason for this action," says Wendy Kennedy, the firm's manager of public relations and customer marketing. "At times, Register.com has also reached out to law enforcement to report suspicious activity."

But the servers in Yarmouth are by no means the only ones in Canada where terrorist-related content may be residing. Until a few weeks ago, the website for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the most extensive and regularly updated of its kind, was registered to a building near downtown Toronto. The address belongs to Contactprivacy, the anonymous-registration arm of Canadian domain-name provider Tucows Inc.

After its web-hosting service in Germany was alerted to the Maghreb site and pulled the plug earlier this year, Tucows followed suit. But in an environment where similar sites are popping up daily, it was a small victory.

It has been seven years now since Abu Huthayfa sent a memo to Osama bin Laden extolling the virtues of an online public-relations strategy. Their opponents have yet to catch up.

"We have been slow to recognize that we have to go beyond tactics and recognize there's a war of ideas," says Mr. Cilluffo. "I believe there's only one side that has stepped up to the battlefield, and it's not us."

Globe and Mail writer Omar El Akkad shared the 2007 National Newspaper Award for investigative journalism with colleague Greg McArthur for their examination of online activities by accused terrorists.

easynash

If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: easynash(2007).

240)Updated index of my blogsite to the middle of August 2007.

2007-08-19T11:19:00.000-05:00

Posts relating to religious doctrine: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 20, 22, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 86, 95, 98, 100, 103, 106, 112, 114, 129, 133, 135, 136, 145, 163, 180, 184, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 200, 204, 205, 208, 213, 223, 229, 234, 235, 242.

Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214, 218, 227, 237.

Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 236, 238, 239, 240.

Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216, 229, 241.

Special collections of posts:

A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127, 229.

B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202, 225, 236, 237, 238, 239.

C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210, 218, 219, 221, 224, 227.

D)Posts relating to my China Series(April, May 2007): 171, 172, 174, 229.

E)Posts relating to or made during my 14,000km, 14 U.S. State, 4 Canadian Province road trip(July, August 2007): 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

239)Latest quote by Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, in Nairobi, Kenya, August 13th 2007.

2007-08-16T19:41:00.000-05:00

1)Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Inauguration of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Aga Khan University,Nairobi, Kenya – 13 August 2007:

"A golden jubilee is a valuable opportunity for putting the present into historical perspective. In that spirit, I would begin today by emphasizing how my concern for education grows intimately out of my family history. It was just a century ago that my late Grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan, began to build a network of educational institutions which would eventually include some 300 schools, many of them in East Africa.

My late Grandfather, who was also the founding figure of Aligarh University in India, was renewing a tradition which stretches back over 1000 years, to our forefathers, the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs of Egypt, who founded Al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. And going back even further, I would cite the words of the first hereditary Imam of the Shia Muslims, Hazrat Ali Ibn Abi Talib, who emphasized in his teachings that “No honour is like knowledge.”"

The quote from Hazrat Ali comes from a speech given by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the Tutzing Evangelical Academy in Germany, upon receiving the Tolerance Award, May 20th 2006:

I cite Hazrat Ali's words....: "No belief is like modesty and patience, no attainment is like humility, no honour is like knowledge, no power is like forbearance, and no support is more reliable than consultation". Hazrat Ali's regard for knowledge reinforces the compatibility of faith and knowledge. And his respect for consultation is, in my view, a commitment to tolerant and open-hearted democratic processes(Aga Khan IV)

I wrote a piece on the uninterrupted thread of the search for knowledge in Shia Ismaili Islam here:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/135the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html

2)"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves"(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines)

3)"Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

Speaking about the "workings of the Creator's physical world" and "the creation and destruction of stars", here is an article that appears in today's Toronto Star about a dying star that began to shed material from itself about 30,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals were beginning to die out in Europe. Much of the material being shed are the elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and others, all created inside the star through the process of nuclear fusion and all of which are elements essential to life as we know it:

http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Science/article/246705

Dying star's huge, comet-like tail amazes scientists

Aug 15, 2007 07:15 PM

Will Dunham
Reuters

WASHINGTON – A large star in its death throes is leaving a huge, turbulent tail of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen in its wake that makes it look like an immense comet hurtling through space, astronomers said Wednesday.

Nothing like this has ever previously been witnessed in a star, according to scientists who detected it using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, an orbiting space telescope that observes the cosmos in ultraviolet light.

This tail, spanning a stunning distance of 13 light-years, was detected behind the star Mira, located 350 light-years from Earth in the "whale" constellation Cetus.

"There's a star with a tail in the tail of the whale," said one of the researchers, astronomer Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, California.
A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.

Rocketing through our Milky Way galaxy at 80 miles per second – literally faster than a speeding bullet – the star is spewing material that scientists believe may be recycled into new stars, planets and maybe even life.

"We believe that the tail is made up of material that is being shed by the star which is heating up and then spiralling back into this turbulent wake," said astronomer Christopher Martin of California Institute of Technology, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature.

Mira is a so-called "red giant" star near the end of its life. Astronomers believe our sun will become a similar red giant in 4 to 5 billion years, but they doubt it will develop such a tail because it is not moving through space as quickly.

"It's giving us this fantastic insight into the death processes of stars and their renewals – their phoenix-like revivals as their ashes get cycled backed into the next generation of stars," added Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University in New York.

Shara said he expects that as this telescope continues mapping the cosmos in ultraviolet light for the first time, other similar stars may be discovered. "There must be lots more of these things," Shara said.

NASA images show the tail as a glowing light-blue stream of material including oxygen, carbon and nitrogen.

This material has been blown off Mira gradually over time – the oldest was released roughly 30,000 years ago as part of a long stellar death process – and is enough to form at least 3,000 future Earth-sized planets, the scientists said.

The astronomers were surprised to find this unique feature in Mira, a well-known star studied since the 16th century. Mira (pronounced MY-rah) stems from the Latin word for "wonderful."
Despite having about the same mass as the sun, Mira has swollen up to over 400 times the size of the sun, meaning the force of gravity is having a hard time holding it together, Seibert said.
The tail stretching 13 light-years is thousands of times the length of our solar system. The nearest star to Earth, called Proxima Centauri, is located 4 light-years away.

While this star looks like a comet, stars and comets are quite different celestial bodies. Comets in our solar system are relatively small objects made up of rock, dust and ice trailed by a tail of gas and dust.

Unlike our solitary sun, Mira is a so-called binary star traveling through space orbiting a companion believed to be the burnt-out, dead core of a star, known as a white dwarf.

Scientists think Mira in time will eject all its gas, leaving a colourful shell known as a planetary nebula that also gradually will fade leaving behind a white dwarf(end of newspaper article).

The NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive also put up this picture of the above dying star and its remarkable tail:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070817.html

easynash
Back home-sweet-home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada after a 14,000km, 14 U.S. State, 4 Canadian Province road trip.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

238)Another remarkable picture by the NASA website of a clear night sky.

2007-08-14T06:57:00.000-05:00

The NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day website put up this remarkable picture today of the night sky as seen against the backdrop of the Grand Teton mountain range, part of the northern Rocky Mountains. This is particularly pleasing for me personally because I just drove by this mountain range during my travels in recent days:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070814.html

Clearly seen in this picture are the Milky Way in the vertical plain, planet Jupiter, star Arcturus and the famous Big Dipper grouping of stars. I blogged about the Big Dipper here:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/102big-dipper-and-little-dipper-in.html

The Arabic names of the stars in the above post speaks to a time many centuries ago during the Islamic Golden Age when Astronomy was ascendant.

easynash
In Winnipeg, Manitoba on the way home to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

237)Now is the time to go outside to see those Perseid meteor showers and an old friend lives his dream and builds an observatory in his backyard.

2007-08-12T23:03:00.000-05:00

Someone took this picture of the the Perseid Meteor Shower on August 11/12 2004:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070812.html

This year's shower, expected to be most visible over the next few hours in Canadian night skies, must already be well under way since it is just past midnight in eastern Canada. Now would be a good time to go outside and take a good look.

On an aside, a former classmate of mine from the University of Toronto and an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer built a mini-astronomical observatory for himself in his backyard in a suburb of Toronto. A picture of it can be seen on his website at

http://ccdimager.net/

Most recently he imaged a beautiful picture of the spiral galaxy M81 from his backyard, as shown in this picture:

http://ccdimager.net/M81-19X10min-20cLUM.jpg

Other astrophotographs taken by Arun can be seen by clicking on the photoalbum at the bottom of his website. As he descibes on his website he has a remote control next to his bedside. When there is a clear night sky he programs the remote then enjoys a night of pleasant slumber as the powerful telescope in his backyard observatory takes pictures all night and produces a composite picture in the morning to post on his website. Hows that for learning about our Universe(What is it made up of?, How does it operate?) in style. Well done Arun; I'll be keeping my eye on your website. Looking forward to seeing more pictures from you.

easynash
Back on Canadian soil(Calgary) after crossing over from Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, U.S.A.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

236)Spectacular show in Canadian and Northern Hemispheric skies this weekend.

2007-08-11T00:21:00.000-05:00

"God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves"(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines)

"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God’s signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order"(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

Meteor shower puts on weekend spectacular

TENILLE BONOGUORE
From the Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper
August 9, 2007 at 1:49 PM EDT

Canadian skies will be streaked with hundreds of meteors Sunday evening as the annual Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak.

The month-long natural light show began on July 17, but it is this weekend that sky watchers will be most eagerly scouring the heavens.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is predicting 100 meteors an hour will burn trails across the atmosphere, starting about midnight Sunday night and lasting until the first light of dawn on Monday.

And the added bonus of having a new moon at the same time means there will not be any bright moonlight to spoil the spectacular, which can be easily seen with the naked eye.

North America will be perfectly placed to enjoy the Perseid meteors, named after the constellation Perseus where they appear to originate.

Sky and Telescope Magazine recommends people that find a dark place with a wide-open view of the sky, and sit back in a reclining lawn chair or lie on a blanket to avoid neck strain.

The later you stay up, the more meteors you are likely to see, the magazine's senior editor, Alan MacRobert, said.

Perseids can appear anywhere in the sky, so it is best to look at whatever section of the sky is darkest in your area.

Faint Perseid meteors appear as tiny, quick streaks, but brighter ones can sail across the sky for several seconds, leaving a glowing trail among the stars.

If cloud blocks the view, do not give up – some of the best showers of the Perseid show will be in the pre-dawn hours from Friday through Wednesday.

Each year, Earth passes through rubble left behind by the Swift-Tuttle Comet. According to Sky and Telescope Magazine, the debris slams into the upper atmosphere about 130 kilometres above Earth's surface, travelling about 60 kilometres a second, creating a quick, white-hot streak of superheated air.

The meteor shower is basically confined to the northern hemisphere: Few if any Perseids can ever be seen from countries like Australia, where the area of sky where the meteors appear is always near or below the horizon.

easynash
Idaho Falls, near the Craters of the Moon Monument, Idaho, U.S.A.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

235)An important distinction between rational intellect of the mind and transcendental knowledge of the divine.

2007-08-10T09:15:00.000-05:00

On July 20th 2007 I posted an article on my blog as well as on Ismaili Mail in which I talked about the creation according to the Quran and leading personalities in the world of Islam. In it I tried to show the cascading upward sequence of types of knowledge ranging from the rational intellect of the mind to the transcendental knowledge of the divine. One commenter posted 2 splendid quotes to underscore the clear difference between these two types of knowledge. My response was to quote our present Imam on how one specific kind of rational knowledge(among others), namely, that involved with learning about our universe-what is it made of and how does it operate-can be used as a springboard or platform to facilitate the search for the higher knowledge referred to in those 2 quotes:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/the-creation-according-to-quran-prophet-muhammad-pbuh-aga-khan-iv-aga-khan-iii-imam-jafar-as-sadiq-al-kirmani-al-sijistani-nasir-khusraw-et-al/#comment-13948

I spoke about this topic at greater length in another article posted to Ismaili Mail:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/the-uninterrupted-thread-of-the-search-for-knowledge/

Excerpt of speech made by Mowlana Hazar Imam at the founding of the Aga Khan University In Karachi, Pakistan in 1983:

"..........In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation....."

easynash
On the Oregon Trail, somewhere between Portland, Oregon and Boise, Idaho, U.S.A.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

234)Heartiest Mubarak to Ismailis in Kenya,Tanzania and Uganda on the Golden Jubilee visit of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, August 12th-23rd 2007.

2007-08-08T02:26:00.000-05:00

My link to the eastern part of Africa is not entirely flimsy. I lived in Nairobi, Kenya for one year in 1963 when I was 8 years old and attended the Aga Khan Primary School there. I have been on train and road trips to Mombasa and Kisumu. My wife was born in Uganda and the despot Idi Amin sent her to me here in Canada, where our beloved son and daughter were spawned from the venerable loins of this long-term fling. In 1963 my family and I also drove the entire length of Tanzania on a trip from Pretoria, South Africa to Nairobi, Kenya in a swanky beige VW Beetle(the one with the engine at the back). My maternal grandmother was born in Arusha, Tanzania under the shadow of the big but dormant mountain and my paternal grandmother was born in Kismayu, Kenya. Here's a gift to you to commemorate this unique occasion; the most amazing one-liners and short quotes that I use to nourish, sustain, maintain and promote my blogsite:

AKU=Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan

Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)

It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West (Aga Khan IV, 25 Sept. 1979)

The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity(Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)

To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)

By the art of translation, learning was assimilated from other civilizations. (Aga Khan IV, 16 March 1983, AKU)

An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found(Aga Khan IV, 1993, AKU)

For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence(Aga Khan IV, 1993, AKU)

That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time.(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, AKU)

The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time(Aga Khan IV, 2nd December 2006, AKU)

God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves(Aga Khan IV, 24th November 1963, Mindanao University, Phillipines,)

Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields(Aga Khan IV, 6th February 1970, Hyderabad, Pakistan)

Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all"(Aga Khan IV, 27th May 1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)

The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)

A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations(Aga Khan IV, 25th June 2004, Matola, Mozambique)

Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God’s signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952, Karachi, Pakistan)

The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being(Aga Khan III, 4th April 1952 Karachi, Pakistan)

The outer universe interpreted as an infinite reality of matter, as a mirror of an eternal spirit, or indeed (as Spinoza later said) an absolute existence of which matter and spirit alike are but two of infinite modes and facets(Aga Khan III, 9th November 1936, London, U.K.)

The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).

Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).

Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).

According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: 'The first thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql)'(Circa 7th Century CE)

Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason(Aga Khan IV, 9th October 2006, Germany)

The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry.(Aga Khan IV, 11th November 1985, AKU)

The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation(Aga Khan IV, 11th November 1985, AKU)

God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'(Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, Circa 765CE)

easynash
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., near the Mount St. Helens Volcano.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few centuries BC)

233)Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park against a clear night sky on the NASA Pictures Of The Day Website.

2007-08-07T11:36:00.000-05:00

The dude('dude' is gender neutral for me and could be a female or male) who administers the NASA Astronomy Pictures Of The Day Website must be reading my blog and knows I am on my way to the Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming soon. He or she posted this marvellous picture on the NASA website today showing Old Faithful steaming away against the backdrop of a scintillating night sky: the lateral plane of our Milky Way galaxy, containing 400 billion stars including our Sun and all its orbiting planets, is visible on the left(visualise a spiral galaxy but looked at from the side instead of from on top); Jupiter at its most shining self just above the top of the geyser's steam plume is also visible:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070807.html

I should be so lucky to have such a clear night sky when I eventually get to Yellowstone National Park. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

"Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'."(Aga Khan IV, 19th October 2003, London, U.K.)

easynash
Somewhere on the road in Northern California, U.S.A.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by their nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

232)Its been one amazing trip so far!

2007-08-05T23:52:00.000-05:00

Its been some trip so far! We left Toronto, Ontario, Canada and so far have wound our way through Windsor, Ontario to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Still to come are Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario to complete the circle.

Historical landmarks and the most awesome natural vistas have made this trip very worthwhile. Coupled to this is the fact that my travelmate, mon cher fils, is doing most of the driving and allowing me to rest my ailing back and neuropathic lower extremities. This is the kind of trip I would wish every father and son to do at least once in a lifetime, one that creates an unforgettable memory and cements even further a strong bond.

We tried to stay as much as we could on the fabled "Route 66"(Google it) while also absorbing the most varied scenery and vistas one can find in a single country and continent. We are still doing Highway 1 on California's Pacific coast and, while trying to forget that a good chunk of this state may some day break off this side of the San Andreas fault and disappear under the Pacific Ocean, the sights, sounds and smells have been awesome. The earlier highlights so far for me have been the southern Rocky mountains and the Grand Canyon. I have already talked about mountains in my last post. We took a plane ride over the Grand Canyon in Arizona and marvelled at this natural wonder of the world. The entire Canyon is 277 miles long, 10 miles wide and 1 mile deep. The elevation of this part of the southwestern United States is about 6000 feet above sea level. Over a period of 2 to 6 million years the Colorado River and its tributaries have sliced a hole 1 mile deep(about 5028 feet) to the bottom of the Canyon, showing the unrelenting erosive power that flowing water can have on the hardest granite rock given enough time. Other erosive processes involving wind, rain and soil erosion, collectively termed 'weathering', are responsible for creating the 10 mile width of the Canyon. The sheer size of the place and overwhelming tranquility that greets you at first sight reminded me of the following saying of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, from 1983:

"Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation."
(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

To underscore the fact that the creation is dynamic and not static, our tour guide told us that in another thousand years, the Canyon will be one foot deeper than it is currently. Its a slow but unrelenting process.

I'm looking forward to Mt. Saint Helens, Yellowstone National Park, the Oregon Trail and Glacier National Park in the days ahead, Inshallah.

easynash
Carmel-By-the-Sea, California, U.S.A.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)
All human beings, by nature, desire to know(Aristotle, The Metaphysics, a few hundred years BC)

231)Mountains according to the Quran and Mountains as we know them today.

2007-08-02T23:16:00.000-05:00

I post this excerpt from the Quran Miracles website discussing the subject of mountains because in the past I have seen a good selection of mountains in various parts of the world, eg, the Tien Shan mountain range in western China, the Appalachians in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., the Laurentians in Quebec, Canada, the northern Rocky mountains in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, the Alps in Central Europe, Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya in East Africa, the Atlas mountains in Morocco, the Drakensburg mountains in South Africa, Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa and currently the southern Rocky mountains just to the west of Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. Driving down from Denver, Colorado to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Rocky mountains rise spectacularly and majestically above the ground. The most amazing aspect of the existence of all these mountains is that what you see above ground is only about one eigth of the total mountain; seven eigths of the mountain remains underground where, according to the Quranic verses below, they act as pegs that stabilise the earth's crust, much like a tent peg stabilises a tent when it is hammered into the ground. This has been borne out by geological knowledge uncovered during the past century. Tomorrow, the magnificent,awesome, mind-boggling Grand Canyon of Arizona, where liquid meets a hard place: a demonstration of the unrelenting erosive power of flowing water:

MOUNTAINS AS PEGS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6- Have We not made the earth habitable?
7- And the mountains as pegs?
78-The Event, 6-7

Mountains are often mentioned in the Quran. The simile of pegs seems to be preternatural in the light of geological findings of the last century. The mountains we observe on the surface of the earth rest on immense strata that may be ten to fifteen times as deep as the portion remaining on the surface of the earth. For instance, the highest mountain on earth, whose peak attains an altitude of 9 km from the ground, possesses a substratum that goes about 125 km into the depths of the earth. For a peg to be able to fulfill its function, the length of the portion stuck in the earth is important. The same holds true for the mountain.

There also exist mountains rising from the bottom of seas that also possess substratum. These substrata support the visible portion of the mountains in accordance with the Archimedean principle. These substrata were unknown until a few centuries back, let alone during the time of the Prophet. The simile in the Quran is once again a miraculous statement.

FUNCTION OF MOUNTAINS
In geology textbooks that have not been updated, information is not available about the role the mountains play, the role of stabilizing the crust of the earth. However, there are some publications on this issue.

The book entitled “Earth” is one of the many now on the market. Frank Press, author of this book, is the president of the Academy of Sciences, adviser to Jimmy Carter, ex-President of the USA. This author likens the mountains to wedges, the greater part of which remain underneath the surface of the earth. In this book, Dr. Press explains the functions of mountains, drawing special attention to their important role in stabilizing the crust of the earth. This information exactly matches the statement in the Quran:

31- “And We have set on the earth mountains standing firm lest it should shake with them.”
21-The Prophets, 31

Actually, the crust of the earth floats on a liquid. This outermost layer of the earth extends 5 km from the surface. The depths of the mountain strata go as far down as 35 km. Thus, the mountains are sort of pegs driven into the earth. Just like the pegs used to stabilize a tent on the ground, so these pegs stabilize the crust of the earth. Mountains are the outcome of collisions between strata of the earth’s crust; the result of the encroachment of a given stratum on another one. These strata that go deeper and deeper enable the crust layers to
integrate.

Isostasy is defined in the Webster’s Third New Twentieth Century Dictionary as follows: “Isostasy is the general equilibrium in the earth’s crust, maintained by a yielding flow of rock material beneath the surface under gravitate stress, and by the approximate equality in mass of each unit column of the earth from the surface to a depth of about 100 km.” At a time when mountains were viewed as mere prominences, the Quran’s reference to mountains’ strata invisible to the eye and their stabilization role leaves us in awe.

easynash
Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

230)Updated index of my blogsite to the end of July 2007.

2007-07-29T15:31:00.000-05:00

Posts relating to religious doctrine: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 20, 22, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 86, 95, 98, 100, 103, 106, 112, 114, 129, 133, 135, 136, 145, 163, 180, 184, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 200, 204, 205, 208, 213, 223, 229.

Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214, 218, 227.

Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230.

Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216, 229.

Special collections of posts:

A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127, 229.

B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202, 225.

C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210, 218, 219, 221, 224, 227.

D)Posts relating to my China Series: 171, 172, 174, 229.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005

229)Summer holiday housekeeping on the easynash blogsite.

2007-07-29T02:15:00.000-05:00

1)To start of with let me first recommend my readership to the Ismailiworld blogsite(click the link on the upper right hand corner on my blogsite), where they have uploaded some really beautiful and joyous pictures of Golden Jubilee celebrations in cities in Asia, Africa and London, U.K:

http://www.ismailiworld.blogspot.com/

2)On the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy website is a good short article on Nasir Khusraw written by Alice Hunsberger, the author of an authoritative book on Nasir Khusraw "The Ruby of Badakhshan". Its worth a read, IMHO:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/khusraw.htm

3)The Ismaili Mail website, as usual, has an excellent array of articles, many still Golden Jubilee-related but also those relating to other programs and personalities. I commented on two in particular that caught my attention:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/proclamation-from-the-province-of-british-columbia-year-of-celebration-of-the-golden-jubilee-of-the-imamat-of-his-highness-the-aga-khan-iv/

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/22/an-uplifting-happy-faith/#comment-13123

4)Over on Jalaledin's blog is a new post entitled "Broad Psychological Themes of Al-Fatiha" in which Jalaledin asks his readership to participate in some research towards his doctoral dissertation in Psychology:

http://www.jalaledin.blogspot.com/

5)I have introduced to my Suggested Links section a new link called Quran Miracles, which I came accross accidently while surfing the Discover Magazine website. Its a great resource and I particularly enjoy the fact that it lists Quranic verses that generally describe many events in nature which could never have been elaborated by the rational intellect of man in the 7th century. In fact most of these ayats or signs in nature were only uncovered by the rational intellect of man during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries:

http://www.quranmiracles.com/

6)I, once again, recently had breakfast with my good friend Bryan at the new and refurbished Le Baguette restaurant in the new and refurbished Fairview Mall at the intersection of Don Mills and Sheppard Avenues, North York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This regular rendezvous has been immortalised in my earlier post:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/101the-joys-of-friendship-and-focussing.html

After breakfast we visited the newly opened Food Court on the lower level and nodded our approval at this new locus of nourishment and revelry.

7)My travel buddy and I are going on a ROAD TRIP!!!!We hope to combine a search for both historical as well as the most famous and beloved natural landmarks in Canada and the U.S.A. These would include landmarks on the world famous Route 66, like the "Land of Lincoln" in Springfield, Missouri, "Tinkertown" in New Mexico, "London Bridge" in Arizona, "The Hollywood Forever Cemetery" in California and perhaps Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Natural wonders would include the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Montana and Alberta; the Grand Canyon in Arizona which demonstrates how a river of water and its tributaries(the Colorado River), given one or two or even a thousand human lifetimes, will flow lazily and uneventfully back to its ocean but, given one or two or a few million years, will slice through the thickest granite rock and hard ground like a hot knife through butter; the breathtaking drive up Highway 1 on California's Pacific Coast all the way up to the Mt. St. Helens volcano(remember 1980!) in Washington State, not forgetting the places in Napa Valley and Oregon where elixir is squeezed out of grapes; Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming which, should its steaming geysers ever explode above its hot spot source deep under it(heaven forbid), will force all surviving life in the Northern Hemisphere to move down into the Southern Hemisphere of dynamic yet fragile planet Earth(hello again, Pretoria!); Glacier National Park straddling Montana and Alberta; The sprawling, flat wheatfields of the Prairie Provinces, Canada's breadbasket; And the quarter million lakes of Ontario, my home Province.

8)I'm also mulling two new posts over the next little while. One is post no. 8 in my Ayats(Signs) in the Universe series, the other is post no. 4 in my China series. The former post reflects my fascination with the numerous cycles that abound in nature, such as the Water Cycle, the Atmospheric Cycle and the Rock Cycle and their possible relation to other, more profound cycles such as the one described in the last section of this article:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm

The latter post plans to be a summary of a recent trip my wife and I took along the ancient and fabled Silk Route of mid to western China along with a few key bustling cities in the eastern part of the country. This information might be of some use to anyone who is planning a trip to China for next year's Beijing Olympic Games(2008).

Regarding my first seven posts in the Ayats(Signs) in the Universe series and my first three posts in the China series, they can be accessed here:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/127no-7-ayatssigns-in-universe-series.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-6.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-5.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-4.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-3.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-2.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/ayatssigns-in-universe-series-no-1.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/174china-series-no-3coming-face-to-face.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/172china-series-no-2-my-comments-to.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/05/171seek-knowledge-even-in-china-my.html

easynash
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

228)Tussle between 'easynash' and the dude 'truthmostimportant'.

2007-07-27T11:16:00.000-05:00

This happens so rarely I feel I have to blog about it whenever it does. Over on the F.I.E.L.D. Ismaili Heritage website in the Forums section, a dude called 'truthmostimportant' made the following comment to me:

dear brother,

I am new to this forum, but I was surprised to find that you can spam here all you want without anybody stopping you, or advertise your blog I will do it too once I have a blog.

I want to ask a very basic question, I am not as well read as you, so appreciate if you can answer in simple English.

"known scientific facts" change every day, do u think it is wise to place ones beleif on such things which are changing constantly...for example for quite sometime newtons laws of gravity were assumed to be definitive until einstein challanged them - this is just one example.

If you say Quran is consistent with lets say how sience describles the earths atmosphere. what will happen if scientiets discover another layer, will you say Quran is not valid or will you look again for a Ayat to match the new scientific "fact".

I responded as follows:

I do not beleive in the kind of rigidity that you describe, where one or two particular facts recently discovered may match a particular verse or two in the Quran. I much prefer a fluid and general approach and have talked and quoted about it extensively in my blog, for example, just to give you a few samples to demonstrate the solid doctrinal basis for the link between the study of science and religion in Islam and, in particular, Ismailism:

Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world.
(Aga Khan IV, Speech,1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.
(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)

Quote from a letter written by Our 48th Imam to a friend in 1952 under the title: "What have we forgotten in Islam?":
Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Alas, Islam which is a natural religion in which God's miracles are the very law and order of nature drifted away and is still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.……Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being………..The God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe……
(Aga Khan III, 1952)

Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation.
(Aga Khan IV,Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

There are many more examples as expositioned by those who mean the most to us, namely, our Imams, our Prophet and others. I refer you to the following posts:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/213the-creation-according-to-prophet.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/208selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/129quotes-of-aga-khan-4-consolidated.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/133timeless-sayings-of-aga-khan-iii.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-have-we-forgotten-in-islam-aga.html

Regarding being able to blog at will, since you are new to this forum, a little bit of a history lesson is in order here. I actually began to write on this topic, "The Link between Science and Religion in Islam" on this Forum in March 2006 and only converted it into a personal blog on Google Blogger in December 2006. Regarding your reference to spam, I'm not sure I understand what you are talking about. I hope I have explained myself in English simple enough for you.

Should you decide to start a like-minded blog please let me know and I will be sure to link to it.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

227)One journalist's opinion on the 7 most exciting moments in Science.

2007-07-26T21:24:00.000-05:00

The 7 Most Exciting Moments in Science

Hint: Newton and Archimedes didn't make it.
by Brittany Grayson
From Discover Magazine

One of science’s most well loved stories is that of Archimedes, fresh from discovering the principle of buoyancy during a bath, running naked through the streets of Syracuse yelling “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”) Unfortunately, the story, told for the first time two centuries after Archimedes’ death, is hogwash. Myths like this one sometimes make it seem that science moves along in a series of epiphanies, hopping from one transcendent moment to another.

In reality, science generally pushes forward with all the alacrity of tectonic plates, painstakingly testing and disproving theories until new laws emerge. But sometimes, very rarely, science really does take a great leap forward. Here are the seven most exciting and important moments in the entire history of science:

7) Scientists worked like mad at the turn of the 20th century trying to determine how nerve cells transmit messages. Otto Loewi had heard of an obscure theory that they communicated by releasing pulses of chemicals, but hadn’t thought about it for decades until one night in 1920. He dreamed of an experiment involving the still-beating hearts of frogs that would test this theory. He woke up, took copious notes, and returned blissfully to sleep. In the morning, he found the notes illegible, the insight vanished. Fortunately, the dream made a repeat appearance the next night, and this time Loewi sprang out of bed and rushed to the laboratory to begin the experiments that helped confirm the chemical transmission of nerve impulses.

6)Young René Descartes was a sickly child. To shore up his health, he was allowed to sleep until 11 o’clock every morning, a habit he maintained throughout his adult life. During one of these mornings abed, Descartes watched a fly flit across the ceiling. He realized he could describe the fly’s movements and its location by measuring its distance from two perpendicular walls. A formalized version of this fly-tracking technique became the Cartesian coordinate system of perpendicular lines and planes.

5) The direct current generator that ran the first power plant in the 1870s blinded the world with science, but Nikola Tesla remained underwhelmed: It was inefficient and broke down easily. While strolling through a Budapest park in 1882 as the sun was sinking, Tesla pondered this dilemma. He recited a stanza from his favorite play, Faust, in which a scientist trades his soul for knowledge. Tesla’s prodigious brain, possibly desperate to find a new topic, conjured up the design for a reliable and efficient alternating current motor. Tesla started sketching plans with a stick for the benefit of his walking partner.

4) Long before we had the Hubble Telescope, astronomers were puzzled about the nature of nebulae: odd, faint stars that sometimes looked like spirals. Some scientists, proponents of the island universe theory, suggested they were galaxies—distinct clusters of stars—millions of light-years away. Opponents claimed they must be some new sort of star within our own galaxy. Edwin Hubble solved the entire puzzle from a California hilltop in 1923. He examined a famous smudge of light named Andromeda, and noticed that it resolved to a cluster of discrete stars, proving the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way.

3) Robert Hooke contributed to fields as diverse as astronomy, architecture, paleontology, and physics, but his most important accomplishment was in biology. In 1665, he built his own compound microscope and began exploring. When he peered through its lenses at a thin slice of corkwood, he saw infinitesimal rectangles that reminded him of monks’ cells. Hooke thereby discovered biological cells, the fundamental unit of all organisms.

2) In 1896, physicist Henri Becquerel was fascinated by the recently discovered X-ray. He thought that naturally fluorescent minerals produced X-rays after prolonged exposure to sunlight. To test his theory, he let mineral samples soak up the sun and then wrapped them in black cloth with a photographic plate, expecting the resulting X-rays to create weak images. On a February day too overcast to work, Becquerel wrapped up a plate with a sample of uranium and left it in a drawer for the next few days. By the time he opened the bundle, the uranium had burned its own image on the film, as clear as if it had been exposed to bright sunlight. Something in the rock released more energy than weak phosphorescence could explain. Upon further investigation, he and Marie and Pierre Curie discovered that that something was radioactivity.

1) In 1928, Alexander Fleming had the archetypal eureka moment—and unlike the tale of Archimedes, this one’s true. Believing that there was a substance in snot that worked as an antibiotic, he smeared a set of Petri dishes with bacteria and his own special Fleming phlegm, and left the dishes while he took a two-week vacation. When he returned, the mucus had not killed any of the bacteria, but mold had drifted in from a nearby lab and contaminated one dish. All the bacteria close to the mold were dead. Closer examination of the mold showed that it was producing a chemical—penicillin—that killed the bacteria.

As with any top-whatever list, picking the best eureka moments is a judgment call; from where we’re sitting it seems that Fleming’s discovery was truly a momentous event, that Newton probably didn’t get pelted in the head with an apple, and that Descartes most likely did lie in bed and watch flies (it was, after all, the 17th century).

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

226)"Seek knowledge, even in China"; "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave"(Prophet Muhammad)

2007-07-25T14:37:00.000-05:00

1)Glowing testimonials about the Teaching Company.
2)An excellent way to accumulate knowledge for those interested in lifelong learning.
3)Very much in keeping with the Ismaili Muslim ethos of seeking knowledge wherever one can find it:

http://www.teach12.com/teach12.asp

Testimonials

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easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

225)Relative to the rest of the Cosmos, calling planet Earth miniscule is a gross overstatement; its more like an invisible, submicroscopic pinpoint.

2007-07-22T20:35:00.000-05:00

Recent pictures from NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Website:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070721.html

In the above picture of the Andromeda galaxy, the largest galaxy next to our own Milky Way galaxy, the caption below the picture says:
"The data confirm that Andromeda (aka M31) houses around 1 trillion stars, compared to 4 hundred billion for the Milky Way."

Our sun is a medium-sized star with 8 planets(of which our planet Earth is one of the smallest) and many other smaller objects orbiting around it. There are 400 billion stars like our sun in our Milky Way galaxy and the galaxy right next door to us, the Andromeda galaxy, has 1 trillion such stars in it. Thats just the beginning of it! Research using the Hubble Space Telescope has allowed people in the know to estimate that there are at least 500 billion galaxies like Andromeda and Milky Way strewn accross the Universe: "If you think of this Universe, He is above this Universe; if you think of a thousand other Universes, He is above a thousand other Universes.....". Where have I heard this before?

Other pictures, taken by astrophotographers from around the world:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070724.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070719.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070716.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070715.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070714.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070712.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070718.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070706.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070629.html

Mowlana Sultan Mohammed Shah, Aga Khan III, said:
"Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will"(Memoirs, 1954)

He goes on to elaborate in the same chapter on Islam in his Memoirs:
"Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain" (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

I did some research on the subject of the Creation according to the Quran and key personalities in Islam and distilled a series of 28 excerpts and quotes from a wide variety of sources here:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/213the-creation-according-to-prophet.html

If you follow the 28 sayings from top to bottom, I think you will get an inkling of the cascading sequence of knowledge starting with timeless, instantaneous intellect of the heart at the top and ending with sequential, cogitative and discursive rational intellect of the mind at the bottom. On the other hand, and more importantly, if one follows these sayings from the bottom to the top, we can see how studying about the Universe(what is it made of?, how does it operate?) with the proper attitude and mindset can possibly open up a door to partake in timeless, instantaneous intellect, to be able to say as Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'. This series of 28 sayings was featured on the Ismaili Mail website here:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/the-creation-according-to-quran-prophet-muhammad-pbuh-aga-khan-iv-aga-khan-iii-imam-jafar-as-sadiq-al-kirmani-al-sijistani-nasir-khusraw-et-al/

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

224)"Ibn al-Haytham:First Scientist", written by award-winning prolific author, poet, lyricist Bradley Steffens, is featured on Ismaili Mail website.

2007-07-20T21:07:00.000-05:00

The Ismaili Mail website recently posted an article on California author Bradley Steffens and his most recent book, "Ibn al-Haytham:First Scientist":

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/california-author-writes-pioneering-book-on-ibn-al-haytham-renowned-11th-century-ismaili-muslim-scientist/

Born in Basra in 965, Ibn al-Haytham was the first person to test hypotheses with verifiable experiments, developing the modern scientific method more than two hundred years before European scholars learned of it—by reading his books.

To test his hypothesis that “lights and colors do not blend in the air,” for example, Ibn al-Haytham devised the world’s first camera obscura, observed what happened when light rays intersected at its aperture, and recorded the results in what would become Kitab al Manazir (Book of Optics). Ibn al-Haytham conducted this and other experiments investigating the properties of light during a ten-year period when he was stripped of his possessions and imprisoned as a madman in Cairo.

How Ibn al-Haytham came to be in Egypt, why he was judged insane, and how his discoveries launched the scientific revolution are just some of the questions answered in Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, the world’s first biography of the Muslim scholar known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen.

Abdul Jabbar Al-Shammari, the director of the Ibn al-Haitham Center for Science and Technology in Amman, Jordan, writes: “I enjoyed reading about the events in the life of our scientist, Ibn al-Haitham. I congratulate you on writing a fantastic and accurate book.”

E. Salik of Los Angeles writes: “I recently read Steffens’ book on Ibn al-Haytham. This is one of the best books I have ever read. His comments on historical data are commended.”

Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist by award-winning author Bradley Steffens can be yours for just US $20.96. You save 25% off the cover price of $27.95. Click here to order.
http://www.ibnalhaytham.net/

I introduced Bradley Steffens to my readership after he sent me an e-mail informing me about his new book on this illustrious Muslim scientist, whom he claims was the real pioneer of the Scientific Method, the bedrock principle under which all scientific research has been conducted since the onset of the European Renaissance:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/221bradley-steffens-on-ibn-al-haytham.html

Interestingly Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, has this to say about the "spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry", "independent thinking" and engaging "both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found":

The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University)

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

223)Libraries, where knowledge is stored and dispensed in the form of the written word, art, picture and digital media.

2007-07-20T15:39:00.000-05:00

Libraries, those repositories of accumulated knowledge, have played a key role in every incarnation of Ismaili and Muslim society and culture since the inception of Islam. Those libraries that immediately come to mind are the ones in Baghdad(Abbasid Caliphate), Cordoba and Seville(Umayyad Islamic Spain), Al-Azhar and Dar al-Ilm(Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt), the library at Alamut(Persia) and many others. When the Mongols invaded Alamut in 1256CE, they made a point of destroying the Ismaili libraries during their genocidal orgy.

Libraries and, more importantly, the links between and among libraries, are once again taking their proper place in Civil Society among different Islamic cultures:

IIS Participates in Middle East Libraries Conference
July 2007

Wendy Robinson, a Research Assistant at IIS’ Department of Academic Research and Publications (DARP), gave a presentation at the MELCOM International (Middle East Libraries Committee) conference in Sarajevo last month on the forthcoming publication of Encyclopaedia Islamica. Ms Robinson gave the talk to the conference of librarians working in the field of Middle Eastern studies at their annual meeting, held for the first time in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The talk introduced the IIS and Encyclopaedia Islamica, an abridged translation of the Persian Encyclopaedia Da’irat al-Ma‘arif-i Buzurg-i Islami. The first volume of the translation will be published in 2008 under the chief-editorship of Professor Wilferd Madelung and will encompass approximately 16 volumes.

The conference was hosted by the Bosniac Institute in Sarajevo and run in conjunction with the Faculty of Islamic Studies of the University of Sarajevo. More than fifty delegates were in attendance from institutions based in Europe, the Middle East and North America. The IIS was also represented at the conference by Ms Shellina Karmali, the Audio-Visual and Special Collections Librarian. Participants discussed recent developments in bibliography, cataloguing, technology, and co-operation between institutions, and showcased items of specific interest in their collections.

There was also considerable discussion of methods to preserve the unique cultural heritage of manuscript and rare book collections related to Islam and Muslims, particularly by digitisation. The importance of this endeavour was highlighted by a special visit to the former National Library in Sarajevo, 90% of whose collection (1.5 million volumes) was destroyed by shelling during the siege of the city. One of the highlights of the conference was the presentation by András Riedlmayer, of the Aga Khan program at Harvard University, on the destruction of Islamic cultural heritage in the Balkans. One of the worst examples of which was the burning in 1992 of Sarajevo’s Institute for Oriental Studies, resulting in the loss of the Ottoman provincial archives and the country’s richest collection of Islamic manuscripts (5,263 codices in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Persian and Bosnian).

Conference participants also visited the Ghazi Husrev Bey Library, the Faculty of Oriental Studies in Sarajevo, the Blagaj Tekke and the famous Stari Most (old bridge) and old city in Mostar, funds for the restoration of which were provided by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=108312

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

222)Third excellent DVD lecture series on the History of Science(20th Century); Relevant Quranic quotes.

2007-07-19T10:40:00.000-05:00

The Teaching Company History of Science Trilogy: Numero Trois

Many Muslims do not realise it but the 20th century was, in my opinion, Islam's greatest century in its 1400 year history although, if you read the newspapers today, it sure does not seem like it. The truth is, many of the natural phenomena described in the following Quranic verses were discovered by the rational intellect of man during the 20th century:

Chapter 21, Verse 30: Do not the unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together before We clove them asunder, and of water fashioned every thing? Will they not then believe? (Nebular Hypothesis, formation of the Solar System, origins of life in shallow oceans, large amount of water in all living things).

Chapter 51, verse 47: We built the heavens with might, and We expand it wide. (Expansion of the Universe).

Chapter79, verse 30: And then he gave the earth an oval form. (Ellipsoidal or Spheroidal shape of the earth).

Chapter 86, verse 11: I swear by the reciprocating heaven..... (Earth around its own axis, around the sun, the solar system around the centre of the black hole around our own spiral galaxy, the spiral galaxy around its own cluster of galaxies, our universe around a centre along with multiple other adjoining universes?).

Chapter 37, verse 5: He is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, and all that lies between them; He is the Lord of the Easts(Multiple dimensions)

Chapter70 verse 4: The angels and the spirit ascend to Him in a day, the measure of which is fifty thousand years(Matter cannot move faster than the speed of light)

Chapter 32, verses 5-6: He rules all affairs from the heavens to the earth. Then they all go back up to him in one day, whose measure is a thousand years by your reckoning...(Matter cannot move faster than the speed of light).

This last group of 36 lectures on the History of Science is a continuation of the earlier two lecture series and the three of them together cover 4000 years of the History of Science:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/220another-excellent-dvd-lecture-series.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/214excellent-dvd-lectures-on-history-of.html

Science in the 20th Century: A Social-Intellectual Survey (36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 1220:

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1220&id=1220&pc=Science%20and%20Mathematics

Taught by Steven L. GoldmanLehigh UniversityPh.D., Boston University

As the 19th century drew to a close, the age-old quest to understand the physical world appeared to be complete except for a few minor details. "It seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established," said Albert Michelson, the first American scientist to win a Nobel Prize.

But when Michelson made that prediction, he never dreamed that one of the "details"—his own curious discovery that the speed of light is constant no matter how fast an observer is moving—would soon be explained by a revolutionary theory that redefined the very concepts of space, time, matter, and energy.

The author of that theory, called relativity, was Albert Einstein. He would also lay the foundation for a strange new picture of the atom, which would eventually lead to quantum mechanics and a succession of startling discoveries driving physicists to ever more bizarre theories of the ultimate nature of the universe.

Imagine Today's Science from a Turn-of-the Century Perspective

Scientists in 1900 had no inkling of the other mind-boggling developments that lay in wait: plate tectonics, genetic engineering, space probes, nanotechnology, Big Bang theory, electronic computers, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, and many other astounding products of the human mind.

Indeed, by the end of the 20th century, nearly every 19th-century theory of natural and social phenomena would be overthrown or superseded.

A philosopher and historian of science, Professor Goldman (Ph.D., Boston University) has been researching the growing power and influence of science in modern society for nearly 40 years.
"For me," he says, "there's tremendous intellectual satisfaction from seeing how the ideas of 19th-century science were transformed in the 20th century into new kinds of theories that have much greater explanatory power, predictive power, and control power."

A Course in Ideas

"Transformation" is key—because 20th-century science is less revolutionary than evolutionary, in the sense that it built on crucial 19th-century concepts such as energy, natural selection, atoms, fields, and waves.

Professor Goldman is fascinated with such connections, which makes this more than a traditional history course.

Einstein himself was drawing on the known principles of waves and fields to reach the unexpected conclusions of the theory of relativity.

Throughout these 36 lectures, you learn the distinctive ideas that characterize 20th-century science, among them:

Science is a unity that encompasses the "hard" sciences of physics and chemistry, and the "soft" sciences, such as economics and sociology.

Modern science is a cultural phenomenon that has an inside, intellectual dimension, and an outside, social relationship dimension.

Concepts change: The terms space, time, matter, energy, the universe, Earth, gene, language, economy, culture, and society no longer mean what they did a century ago.

Reality is ultimately describable in terms of information, relationships, and processes.

The course is organized into five major themes: matter and energy, the universe, Earth, life, and humanity. The last theme, humanity, encompasses the social sciences, an area that is often omitted from histories of science.

Professor Goldman remedies that oversight to bring you the most significant ideas in anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, sociology, political science, economics, psychology, and cognitive science—alongside the major developments in physics, chemistry, mathematics, earth science, and biology.

Capstone of a 4,000-Year Quest for Knowledge

This course represents the capstone of a 4,000-year quest for knowledge that originated in the ancient Near East and is covered in The Teaching Company Courses, The History of Science: Antiquity to 1700 and The History of Science: 1700 to 1900.

Some of the key figures you discuss are household names: Albert Einstein, Watson and Crick, Sigmund Freud, and Stephen Hawking.

Many are less well known: Franz Boas was a major influence on all of the social sciences in the first half of the 20th century; John Maynard Keynes is arguably the Einstein of economics; and an American geologist named Harry Hess came up with the theory of seafloor spreading, which led to plate tectonics.

Many other influential investigators are featured, including:

Philosopher-mathematician Bertrand Russell who, in the early 20th century, refuted the long-standing project of Gottlob Frege to reduce all of arithmetic to logic by posing a famous paradox.

Astronomer Fred Hoyle who, in the 1950s, ridiculed the hypothesis that the universe expanded from an infinitely dense point by labeling it the "big bang" theory. The name stuck—and the theory ultimately triumphed.

Physicist Leon Lederman, who was encountered by Professor Goldman in 1978, moments after a telegram confirmed Lederman's historic discovery of the top quark. Goldman asked him, "Do you think quarks are real, or is this another intellectual construct?" Lederman replied, "Well, when [Murray] Gell-Mann thought there were three, I thought they were real. When he said there were four, that was also okay. If I'm right and there are five, then there have to be six. Six are too many, so there must be something more fundamental than quarks." Goldman adds, "I don't think he has that opinion today."

A Grand Tour of the Sciences

Professor Goldman discusses many different aspects of science, among them:

Science and society: A turning point in the growth of U.S. science came in 1862, when Congress passed the Merrill Land Grant Act, giving large tracts of federal land to any state that would create an engineering college. This created an academic community that would later help spawn the unparalleled scientific advances of the 20th century

Physics: In developing the special theory of relativity, Einstein was driven by a profoundly simple question: what does it mean to say that two events happen at the same time?

Mathematics: Mathematicians live with a peculiar, unresolved problem: what is the nature of mathematical objects? Do they exist independently of the human mind?

Psychology: The Stanford-Binet IQ test was developed during World War I to screen out recruits who were not intellectually capable of functioning in the U.S. Army. It was not intended to be an index for ranking intelligence at all levels. Nonetheless, it became the basis for what is still a preoccupation with testing.

Cosmology: In the 1950s, most scientists were sympathetic to the steady state theory that held the universe has always existed. For science, absolute beginnings are a problem.

Telecommunications: Today, fiber optic cables and communications satellites make long distance phone calls routine. However, at the time of Sputnik in 1957 there was just one undersea telephone cable connecting the U.S. with Europe, carrying a grand total of 36 simultaneous calls.

Meteorology: The atmosphere transports insects, seeds, pollutants, sand, bacteria, and viruses between continents. Sand from the Chinese desert routinely rains down on the west coast of the U.S. bringing microbes with it.

Archaeology: Archaeologists increasingly use techniques borrowed from other disciplines.
Recently, textile experts were able to identify Celtic weaving patterns in cloth discovered in western China, dating from 2000 B.C.E. This establishes a heretofore-unknown ancient link between Europe and Asia.

You will find this course filled with ideas, anecdotes, and insights. As Professor Goldman says at the outset of the first lecture, "Welcome to an intellectual odyssey that I hope will be as fantastic and exciting to you as Homer's Odyssey, without keeping you away from home for 20 years."

Should I Buy Audio or Video?

This course works well in any format. Graphics in the DVD version include about 400 portraits of scientists and diagrams illustrating scientific principles.

Course Lecture Titles

1)The Evolution of 20th-Century Science
2)Redefining Reality
3)Quantum Theory Makes Its Appearance
4)The Heroic "Old" Age of Quantum Theory
5)A Newer Theory—QED
6)QED Meets Fission and Fusion
7)Learning by Smashing
8)What Good is QED?
9)The Newest Theory—Quantum Chromodynamics
10)Unifying Nature
11)Chemists Become Designers
12)Mathematics and Truth
13)Mathematics and Reality
14)The Universe Expands
15)What is the Universe?
16)How Do We Know What's Out There?
17)From Equilibrium to Dynamism
18)Subterranean Fury
19)Solar System Citizen
20)Science Organized, Adopted, Co-opted
21)Techno-Science and Globalization
22)The Evolution of Evolution
23)Human Evolution
24)Genetics—From Mendel to Molecules
25)Molecular Biology
26)Molecular Medicine
27)Culture—Anthropology and Archaeology
28)Culture—History
29)Culture—Linguistics
30)Society—Sociology
31)Society—Political Science
32)Society—Economics
33)Mind—Classical and Behavioral Psychology
34)Mind—Cybernetics, AI, Connectionism
35)Looking Back
36)Looking Around and Looking Ahead

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

221)Bradley Steffens on Ibn al-Haytham; a new addition to the Suggested Links section of my blogsite.

2007-07-18T17:22:00.000-05:00

Dear easynash,

I read with interest your posting about the four giants of 10th to 13th century science. Considering that, I thought you might like to know about my new book, Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist.

It is the first full biography of Ibn al-Haytham to be published in English (or any other language, as far as I know). It has received excellent reviews, which are available on my website: http://www.ibnalhaytham.net/

Of course I would love a mention in your blog or even a link to my site from yours.

I heard the Aga Khan speaking on public radio (NPR in the US) about the need for the younger generation in the West to learn about Muslim history and culture. One of my goals in writing the book was to accomplish that very thing. Apparently I have been somewhat successful. Barnesandnoble.com writes, "Steffens deftly weaves an overview of Muslim history into this biography."

I recently posted an article online that might interest you. The summary appears here--just click the link to read the full article: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Bradley_Steffens

If you have any questions or would like to know more about my book, let me know. If you think the Aga Khan would like a copy of my book, I would be glad to send it to him.

Best regards,

Bradley Steffens
Escondido, CA 92025

My reply to Bradley Steffens:

Hi Bradley,

Thanks for your e-mail. I have posted your e-mail on my blogsite as well as linked to your website. I have also forwarded it to the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, U.K., who may be interested in obtaining a copy of your book on this illustrious scientist. I like your reviews and will be ordering a copy(signed hopefully) for myself.

Cheers,
easynash

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

220)Another excellent DVD lecture series on the History of Science, this time from 1700 to 1900; sorry, no Islam in this one; lament of Aga Khan III.

2007-07-18T05:53:00.000-05:00

The Teaching Company History of Science Trilogy: Part deux.

This lecture series highlights the achievements of Renaissance Science in Europe and the U.S.A. In this respect, the following quote by Mowlana Sultan Mohammed Shah, Aga Khan III, is relevant. It comes from a letter he wrote to a friend in 1952 under the title of "What have we forgotten in Islam?"; I chose a catchy one-liner from this letter to be one of my signature posts that appear at the end of every blog post that I make:

"Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion. Alas, Islam which is a natural religion in which God's miracles are the very law and order of nature drifted away and is still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.……Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being………..The God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe……"(Aga Khan III, 1952)

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-have-we-forgotten-in-islam-aga.html

I am currently going through this course and finding it very enjoyable. It should be seen as a continuation of the course described in this earlier post:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/214excellent-dvd-lectures-on-history-of.html

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1210&id=1210&pc=Science%20and%20Mathematics

History of Science: 1700–1900 (36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)Course No. 1210
Taught by Frederick GregoryUniversity of FloridaPh.D., Harvard University

In the period 1700-1900, kings and empires rose and fell, but science conquered all, taking the world by storm.

Yet, as the 1700s began, the mysteries of the universe were pondered by "natural philosophers"—the term "scientist" didn't even exist until the mid 19th century—whose explanations couldn't help but be influenced by the religious thought and political and social contexts that shaped their world.

The radical ideas of the Enlightenment were especially important and influential. In this course you see how the work of these natural philosophers prepared the way for the more familiar world of science we recognize today.

Understand Two Centuries of Scientific Discoveries from an Unusually Qualified Professor

To navigate this complex a mix of social factors and scientific knowledge requires a teacher of very specialized background. Trained as both a mathematician and seminarian before receiving his doctorate as a scholar of scientific history, Professor Frederick Gregory brings an unusually apt perspective to the era covered by this course. It was a time when the Church's influences on science were often profound.

Dr. Gregory has organized the course around six main themes:

1)inquiries into the history of the cosmos
2)investigations into the realm of living things
3)the largely successful attempt to break away from occult explanations of chemical phenomena
4)the contrasting persistence of occult appeals in explaining natural phenomena
5)the proliferation of the number and kind of physical forces discovered and investigated, thereby opening up broad vistas for the future
6)the recurring theme of the relationship of God to nature

In moving back and forth across two centuries, the lectures touch on many of the scientific disciplines we know today, including chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, paleontology, and others. And they often cover in detail famous experiments and discoveries in areas as divergent as electromagnetism, fossil analysis, and medicine.

Beyond Einstein: Familiar Names, and Some Surprises, Too

You will find names that leap out as familiar, like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur, Max Planck, Antoine Lavoisier, and Albert Einstein.

And you'll meet some of the greatest names in the histories of non-scientific disciplines. These include thinkers as diverse as Immanuel Kant, Johann von Goethe, Herbert Spencer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Paine, to name but a few. All of them entered the fray to leave their mark on the annals of scientific inquiry.

But you'll also learn about others within this fledgling scientific community whom you may never have encountered before. Do you know about Nicolas Malebranche ... Jakob Moleschott ... Robert Chambers ... Abraham Werner ... William Whewell ... or a remarkable woman named Mary Somerville?

Though perhaps less familiar than the scientific minds with whom we have grown up, their roles in the developing history of science were equally important.

The Interaction of Science and Society

The discussions of scientific principles always show how science developed and how scientific inquiry influenced, and was influenced by, the culture of which it was a part. Any discussion of such influence, of course, must take into account the impact of religion.

The Church's precepts played a role in investigations in almost every area of natural science, from the mechanical laws that governed the behavior of the universe and the bodies within it to the debate over God's role in embryonic development.

You'll even learn about a ferocious debate over the possibility of extra-terrestrial life that had its roots in the 13th century.

The debate—which Professor Gregory dubs "The Extra-Terrestrial Life Fiasco"—ultimately involved Thomas Aquinas, the papacy (more than once), Thomas Paine, and the Master of Cambridge University's Trinity College.

Captivating Portraits of an Era and Its People

The debate is just one of many episodes that amplify the themes of the course and are simply fascinating in their own right, conveying a vivid portrait of an era and the people who helped shape it.

You'll learn how:

-the already raging firestorm over the possibility of evolution led Darwin to delay publishing his own findings
-the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was involved in coining the term, "scientist"
-the self-educated daughter of a British naval officer became a major scientific authority in Victorian Britain.

This course will give you a multi-disciplined picture of science in its historical context as it explores the ideas that took the world by storm.

Beyond that obvious benefit, it will also allow you to enjoy a provocative and nuanced look into an era of excitement and exploration, as scientific thought changed and adapted to accommodate a radically changing world.

This history of science series beginning in the 18th century works very well on its own, and is also designed to follow chronologically from Professor Lawrence M. Principe's 36-lecture course on the history of the foundations of science, The History of Science: Antiquity to 1700.

Should I Buy Audio or Video?

This course works well in any format. The DVD version features hundreds of images including portraits of natural scientists, depictions of famous experiments, and helpful charts and diagrams, plus helpful on-screen text highlighting important definitions, important dates, and famous figures in the history of science.

Course Lecture Titles

1)Science in the 18th and 19th Centuries
2)Consolidating Newton's Achievement
3)Theories of the Earth
4)Grappling with Rock Formations
5)Alchemy under Pressure
6)Lavoisier and the New French Chemistry
7)The Classification of Living Things
8)How the Embryo Develops
9)Medical Healers and Their Roles
10)Mesmerism, Science, and the French Revolution
11)Explaining Electricity
12)The Amazing Achievements of Galvani and Volta
13)Biology is Born
14)Alternative Visions of Natural Science
15)A World of Prehistoric Beasts
16)Evolution French Style
17)The Catastrophist Synthesis
18)Exploring the World
19)A Victorian Sensation
20)The Making of The Origin of Species
21)Troubles with Darwin's Theory
22)Science, Life, and Disease
23)Human Society and the Struggle for Existence
24)Whither God?
25)Forces, Forces Everywhere
26)Electromagnetism Changes Everything
27)French Insights About Heat
28)New Institutions of Natural Science
29)The Conservation of What?
30)Culture Wars and Thermodynamics
31)Scientific Materialism at Mid-Century
32)The Mechanics of Molecules
33)Astronomical Achievement
34)The Extra-Terrestrial Life Fiasco
35)Catching Up With Light
36)The End of Science?

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

219)Four giants of 10th to 13th century Science in early Islam:Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Butlan, Nasir al-Din Tusi; more quotes of Aga Khan IV.

2007-07-16T23:27:00.000-05:00

The Institute of Ismaili Studies has placed this article from its gallery back onto its main page. I posted the link to this article before on my blogsite but its worth another review. It talks about four giants from the "Knowledge Society" of the 10th to 13th centuries, Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham, Ibn Butlan and Nasir al-Din Tusi:

http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=106512

Quotes of Mowlana Hazar Imam, Aga Khan IV, put this whole thing in context:

In the great expansion of Muslim culture from the 8th through the 11th century, centres of learning flourished from Persia to Andalusia. I do not have to tell this audience about the glories of Al-Azhar established 1000 years ago by the Fatimids. This audience knows full well about the foresight of al-Ma'mun and the Timurid empire and in taking knowledge from all quarters and using it to benefit their society. As Ibn Khaldun wrote, "the Muslims desired to learn the sciences of foreign nations. They made them their own through translations. They pressed them into the mould of their own views. They took them over into their own language from the non-Arab languages and surpassed the achievements of the non-Arabs in them." (Aga Khan IV at the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Aga Khan University, 1993)

From the seventh century to the thirteenth century, the Muslim civilizations dominated world culture, accepting, adopting, using and preserving all preceding study of mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astronomy, among other areas of learning. The Islamic field of thought and knowledge included and added to much of the information on which all civilisations are founded (Brown University, 1996).

Excerpt of address made by Mowlana Hazar Imam to the graduating students at the Aga Khan University, December 2nd 2006:"That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.
If we judge from Islamic history, there is much to encourage us. For century after century, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks and many other Islamic societies achieved powerful leadership roles in the world—not only politically and economically but also intellectually. Some ill-informed historians and biased commentators have tried to argue that these successes were essentially produced by military power, but this view is profoundly incorrect. The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time(Aga Khan IV, 2006)

In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

218)Two books about giants of 20th century Physics: Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg; quotes of Aga Khan IV.

2007-07-16T22:54:00.000-05:00

Book details
1)Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics By Gino Segrè

2)Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science By David Lindley

History of science

Revolutionaries at work and play

Jul 12th 2007
From The Economist print edition

The giant brains who devised quantum mechanics, whatever that means.

PHYSICS was revolutionised by quantum mechanics almost a century ago. The bizarre consequences include the fundamental truth that it is impossible to know everything about the world; the meaning of quantum mechanics still provokes head-scratching by physicists and philosophers alike. A portrait of the great personalities who drove the revolution is provided by these two books.

Perhaps because the subject was mathematically complex and ran counter to classical notions of physical laws, the community of physicists who developed it was small and overwhelmingly young.

In “Faust in Copenhagen” Gino Segrè identifies seven people who devised quantum mechanics: six men and a woman. Five of them went on to become Nobel laureates, and the city in which they did much of their work has become synonymous with the dominant philosophical understanding of the subject. The “Copenhagen interpretation” says that the world people experience is decided upon when the many possibilities of the quantum world collapse to become the certainty of the classical one. (A rival to this view is that the many possibilities of the quantum world all continue to be real and that there are thus many worlds.)

The book takes as its organising theme a short comedy written and performed by the more mischievous members of this community as entertainment at the end of an informal academic gathering held in April 1932. The sketch was based on Goethe's “Faust” where the hero, famously frustrated by the limits to his learning, makes a pact with the devil.

Unlike the other revolution in 20th-century physics, Einstein's general theory of relativity, which emerged from the mind of a single man, quantum mechanics was a group effort. Indeed, it could be argued that it is the more profound achievement and could not have emerged from a single mind. Each person developing it needed the others to help explain what it was they had achieved. But the personalities were hugely different from one another.

Niels Bohr, the elder statesman of the community, was an athletic team worker and family man who needed constant companionship to test his thoughts. He played God in the comedy and is seen above, on the right, studying a spinning top with Wolfgang Pauli:
http://economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9468943

Pauli (who had the part of Mephistopheles) was a portly womaniser given to drinking and smoking; his razor-sharp wit was both scathing and hilarious. Paul Dirac would today be diagnosed with a personality disorder: he could not grasp anything other than the direct logic of the spoken word. Werner Heisenberg was intensely competitive and a tacit supporter of Nazi Germany.

Mr Segrè's tome is a mostly engaging tale: well-researched and fully aware of the political backdrop. He remains true to the scientific language and thought of the time, not resorting to modern concepts. But despite a warning that “there is a good deal of science in the book, as much as can be accommodated without the machinery of equations”, the story neglects the physics. It misses the opportunity to give some appreciation of the beauty of quantum mechanics—and to explain exactly where the subject becomes so confounding.

By contrast David Lindley's volume puts a more equal weight on the science and the personalities who devised it. The book is charmingly written and a delight to read. It has, however, the wrong title: “Uncertainty” is but a single part of quantum mechanics and Mr Lindley covers far more ground, taking readers through a history of atomic and nuclear physics. This enables him to include Einstein who, despite receiving his Nobel prize for early work on quantum mechanics, devoted much of his efforts to opposing the Copenhagen interpretation of it.

Both books highlight the human element of science. Although a Nobel prize is awarded to no more than three individuals, fundamental physics is often done as teamwork. Biographies that capture not only the people involved but also how they interact are a welcome antidote to the impression that the best science is done by the genius alone in his garret.

Qutes of Aga Khan IV:

God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)

It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West. We are to give this light to all. In that spirit, all that we learn will belong to the world and that too is part of the vision I share with you. (Aga Khan IV, Speech 25 Sept. 1979)

The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

217)Updated index of my blogsite to the middle of July 2007.

2007-07-15T02:29:00.000-05:00

Posts relating to religious doctrine: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 20, 22, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 86, 95, 98, 100, 103, 106, 112, 114, 129, 133, 135, 136, 145, 163, 180, 184, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 200, 204, 205, 208, 213, 223, 229.

Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214, 218, 227.

Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230.

Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216, 229.

Special collections of posts:

A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127, 229.

B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202, 225.

C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210, 218, 219, 221, 224, 227.

D)Posts relating to my China Series: 171, 172, 174, 229.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

216)The brand new official website of the Ismaili Muslim Community.

2007-07-13T18:23:00.000-05:00

I was pleasantly surprised when I recieved my online copy of Ontario's Al-Akhbar newsletter indicating the formation of the new official website of the Ismaili Muslim Community:

http://www.theismaili.org/

In stature, this new website belongs among the other two more established official websites, those of The Aga Khan Development Network(AKDN) and Institute of Ismaili Studies(IIS), and I have placed its web address on my Suggested Links corner. I see these three websites as being valuable resources to be tapped into on an ongoing basis. Due to the specific nature of my blogsite, I find myself using and linking more to the Institute of Ismaili Studies website but I certainly will be consulting all three regularly for any information that would add to the value of my blogsite. Anyone who is very familiar with my posts knows how much I depend on and use the IIS website.

Obviously, the Ismaili Mail website feels the same way that I do and has made the new official website of the Ismaili Muslim Community( http://www.theismaili.org/ ) one of its posts of the week:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/13/official-website-of-the-ismaili-muslim-community/

"The Ismaili", the name of the new official website of the Ismaili Muslim Community, has a marvellous gallery of images of key milestones of Mowlana Hazar Imam's 50 years of Imamat.
The most recent are the magnificent pictures of the Imam and his "beloved family" standing outside the official residence wearing the most splendid, noble-looking and dignified gowns, hats and outfits I have ever seen. The day was July 11th 2007 and they were just about to go inside for the homage ceremony.

Over here accross the pond in Tdot, I put on the sunday best clothes I recently had custom-made in Shanghai, China and dutifully transported my mother to Toronto's International Center for a day of rememberance, illumination, good food and good books. My mother wanted to reach there early so she could take her chair in the seniors section of the complex. My wife and daughter would join us little later. As it turned out there were so many people at the Toronto International Center that they ended up on one end of the sprawling complex and I at the other. I later texted my wife at the speed of light(300,000km/sec) and we were able to re-connect in the chow line.

For me a huge attraction of these large communal gatherings is the Literature Counter, a place of illumination itself, where knowledge is dispensed in the form of the written word, art and picture. During the June 2005 Padhramni in Toronto, I seperated myself from a thick wad to build on my burgeoning collection of books and publications put out mostly by the Institute of Ismaili Studies. I still have not finished reading those books but a few days ago I acquired more new publications from the Literature counter at the Golden Jubilee celebration in Toronto, Canada. I also picked up 5 new small tasbihs. With the kind of mileage people put on these whirring beads these days, I felt it would be smart to have replacements for those inevitable wear and tear breakdowns. The books were a bargain pricewise especially compared to having to purchase them from Amazon.com.

In Toronto it was a marvellous gathering, one that will find a prominent spot in the cobwebs of my memory, akin to the cherished memory of my marriage at the hand of Mowlana Hazar Imam during his visit to Toronto in November 1978.

The list of like-minded websites and blogsites continues to grow larger and, by my reckoning, that is a very good thing.

Speaking of a very good thing, I just discovered a new like-minded blogsite called Ismailiworld:

http://www.ismailiworld.blogspot.com/

and I am linking to it for the simple reason that it has already linked to my blogsite.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

215)Golden Jubilee Mubarak and the accolades keep pouring in from all over the world about His Highness Aga Khan IV, Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.

2007-07-10T23:10:00.000-05:00

214)Excellent DVD lecture series on the History of Science from Antiquity to 1700 with good material on Islamic contributions.

2007-07-10T08:26:00.000-05:00

The Teaching Company History of Science Trilogy: Numero uno.

Excerpt from course description: The Teaching Company(the link to the Teaching Company website can be found on the upper right hand corner of my blogsite),

http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=1200&id=1200&pc=Science%20and%20Mathematics

Quote:
The role of Christianity and Islam in staving off complete disaster for scientific learning. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the two monotheistic world religions provided the stability to preserve at least part of the natural philosophy of the classical period, including translations of important texts and the creation of vital centers of scientific thought.

I found this lecture series to be a thorough description of the History of Science up to the year 1700. Lectures 14, 15 and 16 in this series(see below) give a good description of the translation movements that oversaw the translation of ancient texts from Greek to Arabic, then later from Arabic to Latin. In-between are descriptions of Muslim contributions to Astronomy, Mathematics, Optics, Medicine, Atomism and other sciences. Professor Principe is an excellent and engaging lecturer.

Quote of Aga Khan IV:
In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)

History of Science:Antiquity to 1700

(36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)Course No. 1200
Taught by Lawrence M. PrincipeJohns Hopkins UniversityPh.D., Organic Chemistry, Indiana University at Bloomington; Ph.D., History of Science, Johns Hopkins University

"All human beings, by nature, desire to know."
—Aristotle, The Metaphysics

For well over 2,000 years, much of our fundamental "desire to know" has focused on the area we now call science.

In fact, our commitment to science and technology has been so profound that these now stand as probably the most powerful of all influences on human culture.

To truly understand our Western heritage, our contemporary society, and ourselves as individuals, we need to know what science is and how it developed.

-Who, in fact, were the scientists of the past?
-What was the true motivation for their work?
-Is science characterized by lone geniuses, or is it tied to culture and the needs of a particular society?
-Does science really operate in a linear progression, from discovery to discovery?
-What does history reveal about the nature of religion and science?

A Complex Evolution Made Clear

In this course, an award-winning professor leads you on an exploration of these issues as he traces this complex evolution of thought and discovery from ancient times to the Scientific Revolution.

Professor Lawrence M. Principe, who is Professor of both Chemistry and the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at Johns Hopkins University, is a winner of the Templeton Foundation's prestigious award for courses dealing with science and religion. He has also won several teaching awards bestowed by Johns Hopkins and in 1999 was chosen Maryland Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation.

Dr. Principe gives living order to science's story by considering it in terms of several penetrating questions, two of which are especially important. Who pursued science—and why? What happened—and why?

As he notes, "Science is a dynamic, evolving entity, tightly connected to the needs and commitments of those who pursue it. The real context of even familiar scientific developments will frequently come as a surprise and can suggest alternative ways for present-day thinking and science to develop."

You will see how many scientific discoveries originated from ideas that might be considered ridiculous or humorous from today's perspective of "cutting-edge technology," as science's earliest thinkers worked under the limitations imposed by the knowledge and culture of their times.

But you'll also see that many of these early principles are still relevant and embraced today.

Follow the Transition from "Natural Philosophy" to "Science"

Our notions of "science" and "scientists" date only to the 19th century. Before then, "science" simply meant knowledge; the label of "scientist" did not exist.

Instead, the study of the natural world was known as "natural philosophy." And even the great philosophers Plato and Aristotle are considered two of the most influential figures in the history of science.

Dr. Principe examines scientific thought and activity over nearly four millennia, beginning in the time of the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians.

He restores the vitally important context he believes has been lost from this discussion in recent times.

To cite just two examples:

Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion are still taught today. But can we really assume he formulated them primarily to advance an understanding of orbital mechanics? Did his actual reason even involve the urge for scientific discovery, at least as we know it?

Isaac Newton is considered to be the first "modern" scientist. But is this true? Or have we sanitized him by glossing over certain aspects of his personality, such as his obsessions with alchemy and the biblical apocalypse?

Ideas Linked Through Time

With Dr. Principe's guidance, you will see that science is often characterized by ideas that have an enormously long shelf life, linking widely separated eras.

For example, the ancient Greek theory of atomism, though rejected in its own time, survived through the ages to play a central role in prominent theories of the 17th century.

Similarly, a variety of themes reverberates through the history of science. Among those central to this course are:

-the emphases that civilizations have placed on either theoretical science or practical technology
-the effect of culture on the questions that science asks
-the relationship between science and religion.

You may be surprised by what you learn about that last point.

Today, we tend to see science and religion as separate and even antagonistic. But this has not always been the case. For much of the history of science, theology was actually seen not only as compatible with science, but as the principal motivator of scientific inquiry.

From Plato to Descartes; From Babylon to Paris

This course covers a vast historical landscape. In every lecture, you will find yourself thinking about science from a fresh perspective, aided by a wealth of interesting information.

You'll learn about:

The Babylonian base-60 math system, still in use today for telling time (60 minutes in an hour), measuring angles, and performing astronomical computations (60 minutes in a degree).

The thinking of Plato and Aristotle, which served as the foundation for all scientific inquiry until the Scientific Revolution. You'll learn about Plato's concept of the Forms, how he was influenced by mathematics, and his geometry-based account of the creation of the world in the Timaeus, as well as Aristotle's theory of matter and the four causes of all things.

The Hellenistic-era achievements of Hipparchus, Archimedes, Eudoxus, and Ptolemy in such fields as mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy.

The contributions of the Romans, including hydraulics, road and building construction, their marvelously engineered aqueducts, the Julian calendar, and even the first "standardized" school curriculum.

The role of Christianity and Islam in staving off complete disaster for scientific learning. After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the two monotheistic world religions provided the stability to preserve at least part of the natural philosophy of the classical period, including translations of important texts and the creation of vital centers of scientific thought.

The development of the medieval university method of Scholasticism, which based the study of any subject on oral disputation and written commentary and made a vital contribution to the development of the scientific method of inquiry.

Controversies surrounding heliocentrism. You will encounter a fascinating, in-depth discussion of the facts behind the publication of Nicholas Copernicus's De revolutionibus, which proposed that the earth circles the sun, and of the church's subsequent condemnation of Galileo for supporting Copernicus's views.

Seventeenth-century theories of nature, including the revival of ancient atomism by Pierre Gassendi; the "Mechanical Philosophy" of Rene Descartes and Robert Boyle, which proposed that the world is a giant machine functioning like clockwork; and the "Vitalism" of Jan Baptista Van Helmont, who saw the world operating under the direction of active, living forces.

The rise of scientific societies in Italy, London, and Paris, creating a public focus for the fostering of scientific collaboration.

"We need to understand scientific study and discovery in historical context," notes Dr. Principe. "Theological, philosophical, social, political, and economic factors deeply impact the development and shape of science."

This course provides a comprehensive survey of that process in action. Its 36 lectures can change not only the perspective with which you look at science's past, but the way you understand its present, as well.

Should I Buy Audio or Video?

This series contains approximately 200 pictures, diagrams, and maps. The course works well in any format. Visuals in the DVD version include portraits of great figures, depictions of experiments, original scientific texts, vintage maps, and scientific manuscripts, as well as visual aids, particularly for the astronomy lectures.

Course Lecture Titles

1.Beginning the Journey
2.Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks
3.The Presocratics
4.Plato and the Pythagoreans
5.Plato's Cosmos
6.Aristotle's View of the Natural World
7.Aristotelian Cosmology and Physics
8.Hellenistic Natural Philosophy
9.Greek Astronomy from Eudoxus to Ptolemy
10.The Roman Contributions
11.Roman Versions of Greek Science and Education
12.The End of the Classical World
13.Early Christianity and Science
14.The Rise of Islam and Islamic Science
15.Islamic Astronomy, Mathematics, and Optics
16.Alchemy, Medicine, and Late Islamic Culture
17.The Latin West Reawakens
18.Natural Philosophy at School and University
19.Aristotle and Medieval Scholasticism
20.The Science of Creation
21.Science in the Orders
22.Medieval Latin Alchemy and Astrology
23.Medieval Physics and Earth Sciences
24.The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
25.Renaissance Natural Magic
26.Copernicus and Calendrical Reform
27.Renaissance Technology
28.Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo
29.The New Physics
30.Voyages of Discovery and Natural History
31.Mechanical Philosophy and Revised Atomism
32.Mechanism and Vitalism
33.Seventeenth-Century Chemistry
34.The Force of Isaac Newton
35.The Rise of Scientific Societies
36.How Science Develops

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

213)The Creation according to Quran, Prophet Muhammad, Aga Khan IV, Aga Khan III, Imam Jafar As-Sadiq, Al-Kirmani, Al-Sijistani, Nasir Khusraw et al.

2007-07-06T00:17:00.000-05:00

According to a famous hadith of the Prophet Muhammad: The first thing created by God was the Intellect ('aql).

Mowlana Hazar Imam recently(October 9th 2006) made the following statement to the German newspaper 'Spiegel' about the religion of Islam:"Of the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is probably the one that places the greatest emphasis on knowledge. The purpose is to understand God's creation, and therefore it is a faith which is eminently logical. Islam is a faith of reason."(Aga Khan IV)

The Divine Intellect, Aql-i Kull, both transcends and informs the human intellect. It is this Intellect which enables man to strive towards two aims dictated by the faith: that he should reflect upon the environment Allah has given him and that he should know himself. It is the Light of the Intellect which distinguishes the complete human being from the human animal, and developing that intellect requires free inquiry. The man of faith, who fails to pursue intellectual search is likely to have only a limited comprehension of Allah's creation. Indeed, it is man's intellect that enables him to expand his vision of that creation. - (Aga Khan IV, AKU Convocation Speech, Karachi, Pakistan, November 11, 1985)

God – may He be Glorified and Exalted – created Intellect ('aql) first among the spiritual entities; He drew it forth from the right of His Throne, making it proceed from His own Light. Then he commanded it to retreat, and it retreated, to advance, and it advanced; then God proclaimed: 'I created you glorious, and I gave you pre-eminence over all my creatures.'( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (Al-Kulayni, Usul, vol. 1, pp. 23-24))

The beginning of all things, their origin, their force and their prosperity, is that intellect ('aql), without which one can profit from nothing. God created it to adorn His creatures, and as a light for them. It is through intellect ('aql) that the servants recognize God is their Creator and that they themselves are created beings …It is thanks to intellect ('aql) that they can distinguish what is beautiful from what is ugly, that they realize that darkness is in ignorance and that light is in Knowledge.( Imam Jafar as-Sadiq, (al-Kulayni, Usul al-Kafi, Vol. 1, pp. 34))

The Intellect is the substance of (God's) unity and it is the one (al-wahid), both cause and caused, the act of origination (al-ibda) and the first originated being (al-mubda al-awwal); it is perfection and perfect, eternity and eternal, existence and that which exists all in a single substance.( Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani,Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist (Kitab al-Riyad, pp. 221-222))

About Hafiz, the renowned Iranian poet:"Then came Hafiz - by far the greatest singer of the soul of man. In him we can find all the strivings, all the sorrow, all the victories and joys, all the hopes and disappointments of each and every one of us. In him we find contact, direct and immediate, with the outer universe interpreted as an infinite reality of matter, as a mirror of an eternal spirit, or indeed (as Spinoza later said) an absolute existence of which matter and spirit alike are but two of infinite modes and facets."(Inaugural Lecture Before the Iran Society by Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga Khan III, November 9, 1936 London, United Kingdom.)

Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds, and the clouds which they Trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth; (Here) indeed are Signs for the people of intellect(Quran)

Here is a relevant verse from the Qur'an, cited by Nasir-i Khusraw, hujjat-i Khurasan in his Khawaan al-Ikhwaan : "It is He who created you from dust, then from a sperm drop, then from a blood clot, then He brings you forth as a child, then lets you reach your age of full strength, then lets you become old - though some of you die before - and then lets you reach the appointed term; and that haply you may find the intellect (la'allakum ta'qilun)."(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet)

The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).

Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

Quote from a letter written by Our 48th Imam to a friend in 1952 under the title: "What have we forgotten in Islam?":
Islam is fundamentally in its very nature a natural religion. Throughout the Quran God's signs (Ayats) are referred to as the natural phenomenon, the law and order of the universe, the exactitudes and consequences of the relations between natural phenomenon in cause and effect. Over and over, the stars, sun, moon, earthquakes, fruits of the earth and trees are mentioned as the signs of divine power, divine law and divine order. Even in the Ayeh of Noor, divine is referred to as the natural phenomenon of light and even references are made to the fruit of the earth. During the great period of Islam, Muslims did not forget these principles of their religion. Alas, Islam which is a natural religion in which God's miracles are the very law and order of nature drifted away and is still drifting away, even in Pakistan, from science which is the study of those very laws and orders of nature.……Islam is a natural religion of which the Ayats are the universe in which we live and move and have our being………..The God of the Quran is the one whose Ayats are the universe……(Aga Khan III, 1952)

Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).

'Tarkib' is composition as in the compounding of elements in the process of making more complex things, that is, of adding together two things to form a synthesis, a compound. Soul composes in the sense of 'tarkib'; it is the animating force that combines the physical elements of the natural universe into beings that move and act. Incorporating is an especially apt word in this instance. It means to turn something into a body, as in 'composing'. But it is actually the conversion of an intellectual object, a thought, into a physical thing. Soul acts by incorporating reason into physical objects, the natural matter of the universe and all the things composed of it(Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani,10th century Fatimid Ismaili cosmologist, from the book, 'Abu Yakub Al-Sijistani: Intellectual Missionary', by Paul Walker).

In fact this world is a book in which you see inscribed the writings of God the Almighty"(Nasir Khusraw, 11th century Ismaili cosmologist-philosopher-poet).

Kathalika yubayyinu Allahu lakum ayatihi la'allakum ta-'aqiloona: Allah thus makes clear to you His Signs that you may intellect.(Holy Quran 2:242)

Thus there was an absolute need for the Divine Word's revelation, to Mohammed himself, a man like the others, of God's person and of his relations to the Universe which he had created. Once man has thus comprehended the essence of existence, there remains for him the duty, since he knows the absolute value of his own soul, of making for himself a direct path which will constantly lead his individual soul to and bind it with the universal Soul of which the Universe is, as much of it as we perceive with our limited visions, one of the infinite manifestations. Thus Islam's basic principle can only be defined as mono-realism and not as monotheism. Consider, for example, the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer: "Allah-o-Akbar". What does that mean? There can be no doubt that the second word of the declaration likens the character of Allah to a matrix which contains all and gives existence to the infinite, to space, to time, to the Universe, to all active and passive forces imaginable, to life and to the soul. Imam Hassan has explained the Islamic doctrine of God and the Universe by analogy with the sun and its reflection in the pool of a fountain; there is certainly a reflection or image of the sun, but with what poverty and with what little reality; how small and pale is the likeness between this impalpable image and the immense, blazing, white-hot glory of the celestial sphere itself. Allah is the sun; and the Universe, as we know it in all its magnitude, and time, with its power, are nothing more than the reflection of the Absolute in the mirror of the fountain (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954)

Quran Symposium:
....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations.
In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.
The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)

God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. (Aga Khan IV,Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)

Several days ago, at a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia, it was pointed out that the only way the umma can work its way out of its present sad state is to harness the intellect.(Aga Khan IV, Speech,2003, London, U.K.)

It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West. We are to give this light to all. In that spirit, all that we learn will belong to the world and that too is part of the vision I share with you. (Aga Khan IV, Speech 25 Sept. 1979)

The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Aga Khan IV, Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University)

That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.
The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2006, Aga Khan University)

Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength. (Aga Khan IV, Speech,1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past.The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all". That is no less true today.(Aga Khan IV, Speech,1996, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.)

A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations.(Aga Khan IV, Speech, 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)

From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
......Ismailism presents a cosmology within an adapted Neoplatonic framework but tries to create an alternative synthesis. The starting point of such a synthesis is the doctrine of ibda' (derived from Qur'an 2:117). In its verbal form it is taken to mean 'eternal existentiation' to explain the notion in the Qur'an of God's timeless command (Kun: 'Be!'). The process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda' represents the initial level. The human intellect eventually relates to creation and tries to penetrate the mystery of the unknowable God.....
......It has been argued that Ismaili cosmology, integrates a manifestational cosmology (analogous to some aspects of Stoic thought) within an adapted Neoplatonic framework to create an alternative synthesis. The starting point of such a synthesis is the doctrine of ibda (derived from Qur'an 2:117). In its verbal form it is taken to mean 'eternal existentiation' to explain the notion in the Qur'an of God's timeless command (Kun: Be!). Ibda therefore connotes not a specific act of creation but the dialogical mode through which a relationship between God and His creation can be affirmed - it articulates the process of beginning and sets the stage for developing a philosophy of the manifestation of transcendence in creation......
.....In sum the process of creation can be said to take place at several levels. Ibda represents the initial level - one transcends history, the other creates it. The spiritual and material realms are not dichotomous, since in the Ismaili formulation, matter and spirit are united under a higher genus and each realm possesses its own hierarchy. Though they require linguistic and rational categories for definition, they represent elements of a whole, and a true understanding of God must also take account of His creation. Such a synthesis is crucial to how the human intellect eventually relates to creation and how it ultimately becomes the instrument for penetrating through history the mystery of the unknowable God implied in the formulation of tawhid......
......Human history, as conceived in Ismailism, operates cyclically. According to this typological view, the epoch of the great prophets mirrors the cosmological paradigm, unfolding to recover the equilibrium and harmony inherent in the divine pattern of creation. Prophets and, after them, their appointed successors, the imams, have as their collective goal the establishment of a just society. The function of the Prophet is to initiate the cycle for human society and of the Imam to complement and interpret the teaching to sustain the just order at the social and individual levels.(Dr. Azim Nanji, Director, The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, U.K.)

The above 28 quotes and excerpts have been extracted from the following posts:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/212on-verge-of-discovery-of-elusive.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/07/208selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/129quotes-of-aga-khan-4-consolidated.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/133timeless-sayings-of-aga-khan-iii.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/145audio-speech-as-well-as-timeless.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/sequential-rational-intellect-of-mind.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/quote-aga-khan-4.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-is-extent-of-gods-creation.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/excerpt-aga-khan-4s-interview-with.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/does-reason-equal-revelation-not-quite.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/abu-yakub-al-sijistani-cosmologist.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/quote-aga-khan-3-matter-and-spirit.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-have-we-forgotten-in-islam-aga.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/quotes-aga-khan-3.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/quotes-aga-khan-4.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/excerpt-of-speech-made-by-mowlana-hazar.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/quote-from-letter-written-by-our-48th.html

http://www.iep.utm.edu/i/ismaili.htm

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

212)On the verge of discovery of the elusive Higgs particle(boson) or field, which gives matter its property of mass ; will it be the U.S. or Europe?

2007-07-04T10:02:00.000-05:00

Quotes of Aga Khan IV with regards to scientific endeavour, discovery and the search for knowledge:

Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation. (Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

It (Surah of Light from the Quran) tells us that the oil of the blessed olive tree lights the lamp of understanding, a light that belongs neither to the East nor West. We are to give this light to all. In that spirit, all that we learn will belong to the world and that too is part of the vision I share with you. (Speech 25 Sept. 1979)

The truth, as the famous Islamic scholars repeatedly told their students, is that the spirit of disciplined, objective enquiry is the property of no single culture, but of all humanity. To quote the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Sina: "My profession is to forever journeying, to travel about the universe so that I may know all its conditions." (Speech, 16 March 1983, Karachi, Pakistan)

An institution dedicated to proceeding beyond known limits must be committed to independent thinking. In a university scholars engage both orthodox and unorthodox ideas, seeking truth and understanding wherever they may be found. That process is often facilitated by an independent governance structure, which serves to ensure that the university adheres to its fundamental mission and is not pressured to compromise its work for short-term advantage. For a Muslim university it is appropriate to see learning and knowledge as a continuing acknowledgement of Allah's magnificence.(Speech, 1993, Aga Khan University)

That quest for a better life, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must lead inevitably to the Knowledge Society which is developing in our time. The great and central question facing the Ummah of today is how it will relate to the Knowledge Society of tomorrow.
The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time.(Speech, 2006, Aga Khan University)

God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. (Speech, 1963, Mindanao, Phillipines)

Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength. (Speech,1994, Cambridge, Massachusets, U.S.A.)

The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past.
The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all". That is no less true today.(Speech,1996, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.)

Quran Symposium:
....a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.
This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations.
In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.
The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. (Speech, 2003, London, U.K.)

Several days ago, at a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia, it was pointed out that the only way the umma can work its way out of its present sad state is to harness the intellect.(Speech,2003, London, U.K.)

A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations.(Speech, 2004, Matola, Mozambique.)

Particle physics

Down the rabbit hole.

Jun 28th 2007
From The Economist print edition

America's chances of finding the source of universal mass receive a boost.

"OH DEAR! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" So muttered the White Rabbit just before he plunged into Wonderland, with Alice in pursuit. Similar utterances have been escaping the lips of European physicists, as it was confirmed last week that their own subterranean Wonderland, a new machine called the Large Hadron Collider, will not now begin work until May 2008. This delay may enable their American rivals to scoop them by finding the Higgs boson—predicted 43 years ago by Peter Higgs of Edinburgh University to be the reason why matter has mass, but not yet actually discovered.

The Large Hadron Collider is a 27km-long circular accelerator that is being built at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, specifically to look for the Higgs boson. When it eventually starts work, it will be the world's most powerful particle collider. It will also be the most expensive, having cost SFr10 billion ($8 billion) to build. The laboratory had hoped it would be ready in 2005, but the schedule has slipped repeatedly.

The most recent delay came at the end of March, with the dramatic failure of a magnet assembly that had been supplied by CERN's American counterpart, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago. This device was one of four designed to focus beams of particles before they collide in the experimental areas. Admittedly, it had been placed under extreme conditions when it failed, but such forces are to be expected from time to time when the machine is running normally. The magnets have yet to be fixed, although physicists think they know how to do it.

Other, smaller hitches have compounded the problem. The collider has been built in eight sections, each of which must be cooled to temperatures only just above absolute zero. This is because the magnets used to accelerate the particles to the high energies needed for particle physics rely on the phenomenon of superconductivity to work—and superconductivity, in turn, needs extremely low temperatures. Unfortunately, the first of the eight sections took far longer to chill than had been expected.

If, as the other seven sections are cooled, further problems emerge, the start date will have to be put back still further. It takes a month to cool each section, and a month to warm each one back up to normal temperatures again. If it took, say, a month to fix any problems identified as a section cooled, each cycle would postpone the start date by three months.

To accelerate progress (as well as particles), CERN's management decided last week to cancel an engineering run scheduled for November. Instead of beginning slowly with some safe-but-dull low-energy collisions, the machine's first run will accelerate its particles to high energies straight away.

Such haste may be wise, for rumours are circulating that physicists working at the Tevatron, which is based at Fermilab and is currently the world's most powerful collider, have been seeing hints of the Higgs boson. Finding it would virtually guarantee the discoverer a Nobel prize—shared jointly, no doubt, with Dr Higgs. Hence the rush, as hundreds of physicists head down the rabbit hole, seeking their own adventures in Wonderland.

Other posts by me on this blogsite that either discuss the Higgs particle or mention it:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/147finding-most-fundamental-particles.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/139the-elusive-higgs-particle-which.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/01/116impending-and-exciting-advances-in.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/abdus-salaam-1979-nobel-laureate-in.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/superstring-theory.html

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

211)Two interesting viewpoints by a Canadian journalist.

2007-07-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

From The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper

Moderate Muslims must do more than preach moderation

IRSHAD MANJI
July 4, 2007

The dramatis personae arrested in the wake of the failed British terror plots include medical professionals. This seeming paradox has many scratching their heads. Aren't Muslim martyrs supposed to be poor, dispossessed and resentful about both?

The 9/11 attacks should have stripped us of that simplification. The hijackers came from means. Mohamed Atta, their ringleader, had an engineering degree. He then moved to the West, doing his postgraduate studies in Germany. No aggrieved goat herder, that one.

In 2003, I interviewed Mohammed al-Hindi, the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza. A physician himself, he explained the difference between suicide and martyrdom. "Suicide is done out of despair," he diagnosed. "But most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives."

In short, it's not what the material world fails to deliver that drives suicide bombers. It's something else.

Time and again, that something else has been articulated by the very people committing these acts: their religion. Consider Mohammed Sidique Khan, the teaching assistant who masterminded the July 7, 2005, transit bombings in London. In taped testimony, he railed against British foreign policy. But before bringing up Tony Blair, he emphasized that "Islam is our religion" and "the Prophet is our role model." In short, he gave priority to God.

Now take Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch-born Moroccan Muslim who murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Mr. Bouyeri pumped several bullets into Mr. van Gogh. So why didn't he stop there? Why did he pull out a blade to decapitate Mr. van Gogh? Again, we must confront religious symbolism. The blade is an implement associated with seventh-century tribal conflict. Wielding it as a sword becomes a tribute to the founding moment of Islam. Even the note stabbed into Mr. van Gogh's body, although written in Dutch, had the unmistakable rhythms of Arabic poetry. Let's credit Mr. Bouyeri with honesty: At his trial, he proudly acknowledged acting from "religious conviction."

Despite integrating Muslims far more adroitly than most of Europe, North America isn't immune. Last year in Toronto, police nabbed 17 young Muslim men allegedly plotting to blow up Parliament and behead politicians. They apparently called their campaign Operation Badr. This refers to the Battle of Badr, the first decisive military triumph achieved by the Prophet Mohammed. Clearly, the Toronto 17 drew inspiration from religious history.

For people with big hearts and goodwill, this has to be uncomfortable to hear. But they can take solace that the law-and-order types have a hard time with it, too. After rounding up the Toronto suspects, police held a press conference and didn't once mention Islam or Muslims. At their second press conference, police boasted about avoiding those words. If guardians of our safety intend such silence to be a form of sensitivity, they risk airbrushing the role that religion plays in the violence carried out under its banner.

They're in fine company: Moderate Muslims do the same. While the vast majority of Muslims aren't extremists, a more important distinction must start being made - one between moderate Muslims and reform-minded ones.

Moderate Muslims denounce violence in the name of Islam but deny that Islam has anything to do with it. By their denial, moderates abandon the ground of theological interpretation to those with malignant intentions - effectively telling would-be terrorists that they can get away with abuses of power because mainstream Muslims won't challenge the fanatics with bold, competing interpretations. To do so would be to admit that religion is a factor. Moderate Muslims can't go there. Reform-minded Muslims say it's time to admit that Islam's scripture and history are being exploited. They argue for reinterpretation precisely to put the would-be terrorists on notice their monopoly is over.

Reinterpreting doesn't mean rewriting. It means rethinking words and practices that already exist - removing them from a seventh-century tribal time warp and introducing them to a 21st-century pluralistic context. Un-Islamic? God, no. The Koran contains three times as many verses calling on Muslims to think, analyze and reflect than passages that dictate what's absolutely right or wrong. In that sense, reform-minded Muslims are as authentic as moderates, and quite possibly more constructive.

This week, a former jihadist wrote in a British newspaper that the "real engine of our violence" is "Islamic theology." Months ago, he told me that, as a militant, he raised most of his war chest from dentists.

Islamist violence - it's not just for doctors any more. Tackling Islamist violence - it can't be left to moderates any more.
http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

It's not Salman Rushdie I'm offended by, she says; it's my fellow Muslims.

IRSHAD MANJI
June 20, 2007

The Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper

Growing up in Vancouver, I attended Islamic classes every Saturday.

There, I learned that Jews can't be trusted because they worship "moolah, not Allah," meaning money, not God. My teacher said every last Jew was consumed with business.

But I noticed that most of the new business signs in my neighbourhood featured Asian languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Punjabi and plenty of Urdu, which is spoken in Pakistan.

That made me ask: What if I'm not being educated at my religious school? What if I'm being indoctrinated?

I'm reminded of this thanks to the news that Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses and 10 other works of fiction, will be knighted by the Queen. Pakistan's religious affairs minister responded to the news saying he could understand why, in light of how Mr. Rushdie has blasphemed Islam, angry Muslims would commit suicide bombings over his knighthood. Fellow MPs and the Pakistani government joined in condemning Britain, feeding cries of offence to Muslim sensibilities.

As a Muslim, you better believe I'm offended - by these absurd reactions.

I'm offended that it's not the first time honours from the West have met with vitriol and violence. In 1979, Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam became the first Muslim to win the Nobel Prize in science. He began his acceptance speech with a verse from the Koran. You'd think Mr. Salam's countrymen would have celebrated. Instead, rioters tried to prevent him from re-entering the country; parliament declared him a "non-Muslim" because he belonged to a religious minority. His name still is invoked by state authorities in hushed tones.

I'm offended that every year, there are more women killed in Pakistan for allegedly violating family honour than there are detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Muslims rightly denounced the mistreatment of Gitmo prisoners. But where's our outrage over the murder of Muslims at the hands of our own?

I'm offended that in April, mullahs at an extreme mosque in Pakistan issued a fatwa against hugging. The country's female tourism minister had embraced - or accepted a congratulatory pat from - her skydiving instructor after she jumped from a plane to raise funds for victims of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake. Clerics said her touching a man was "a great sin." They demanded she be fired.

I'm offended by their fatwa proclaiming that women should stay at home and remain covered at all times. I'm offended that they've bullied music store owners and video vendors into closing shop. I'm offended that the government tiptoes around their craziness because these clerics threaten suicide attacks if confronted.

Above all, I'm offended that so many other Muslims aren't offended enough to demonstrate widely against God's self-appointed ambassadors.

We'll complain to the world that Islam is being exploited by fundamentalists, yet fall silent when faced with the opportunity to resist en masse their exploitation. In a battle between flaming fundamentalists and mute moderates, who do you think is going to win?

I'm not saying that standing up to intimidation is easy. This past spring, the Muslim world made it that much more difficult. A 56-member council of Islamic countries pushed the UN Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution against the "defamation of religion." Pakistan led the charge. Focused on Islam rather than on faith in general, the resolution allows repressive regimes to squelch freedom of conscience further - and to do so in the guise of international law.

On occasion the people of Pakistan show that they don't have to be muzzled. Last year, civil society groups vocally challenged a set of anti-female laws, three decades old and supposedly based on the Koran. Their religiously respectful approach prompted even mullahs to hint that these laws are man-made, not God-given.

This month, too, Pakistanis forced their government to lift restrictions on the press. My own book, translated into Urdu and posted on my website, is being downloaded in droves. Religious authorities won't let it be sold in the markets. But they can't stop Pakistanis - or other Muslims - from satiating a genuine hunger for ideas.

It's high time to "ban" hypocrisy under the banner of Islam. Salman Rushdie isn't the problem. Muslims are.

After all, the very first bounty on Mr. Rushdie's head was $2-million. It rose to $2.5-million; then higher. Iran's government claimed the money was profitably invested. Looks like Jews aren't only the only people handy at business.
http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

easynash

If there are 23,000 jihadist websites and blogsites out there in cyberspace, there is no reason why we should not create 100,000 non-jihadist websites and blogsites: easynash(2007).

210)Outstanding series from the Ismaili Web website.

2007-07-04T08:48:00.000-05:00

Ismaili Web:
http://www.amaana.org/ismaili.html

Legacy of Islam - Muslim Heroes and Personalities

Glimpses of Renowned Scientists and Thinkers of Muslim Era

Contents
Abu Abdullah al-Battani
Abu Raihan al-Biruni
Abul Wafa Muhammad al-Buzjani
Abu al-Nasr al-Farabi
Al-Farghani
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Al-Idrisi
Ibn al-Baitar
Abu Ali Hasan Ibn al-Haitham
Ibn al-Nafis
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Rushd
Ibn Sina
Abu Marwan Ibn Zuhr
Jabir Ibn Haiyan
Mohammad Bin Musa al-Khawarizmi
Omar al-Khayyam
Yaqub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi
Abul Hasan Ali al-Masu'di
Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi
Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi
Jalal al-Din Rumi
Ali Ibn Rabban al-Tabari
Thabit Ibn Qurra
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
Abu al-Qasim al-Zahravi

ABU ABDULLAH AL-BATANI
( 858 - 929 A.D.)
Abu Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Jabir Ibn Sinan al-Battani al-Harrani was born around 858 A.D. in Harran, and according to one account, in Battan, a State of Harran. Battani was first educated by his father Jabir Ibn San'an al-Battani, who was also a well-known scientist. He then moved to Raqqa, situated on the bank of the Euphrates, where he received advanced education and later on flourished as a scholar. At the beginning of the 9th century, he migrated to Samarra, where he worked till the end of his life in 929 A.D. He was of Sabian origin, but was himself a Muslim.
Battani was a famous astronomer, mathematician and astrologer. He has been held as one of the greatest astronomists of Islam. He is responsible for a number of important discoveries in astronomy, which was the result of a long career of 42 years of research beginning at Raqqa when he was young. His well-known discovery is the remarkably accurate determination of the solar year as being 365 days, 5 hours, 46 minutes and 24 seconds, which is very close to the latest estimates. He found that the longitude of the sun's apogee had increased by 16 o, 47' since Ptolemy. This implied the important discovery of the motion of the solar apsides and of a slow variation in the equation of time. He did not believe in the trapidation of the equinoxes, although Copernicus held it.

AL-Battani determined with remarkable accuracy the obliquity of the ecliptic, the length of the seasons and the true and mean orbit of the sun.

He proved, in sharp contrast to Ptolemy, the variation of the apparent angular diameter of the sun and the possibility of annular eclipses. He rectified several orbits of the moon and the planets and propounded a new and very ingenious theory to determine . the conditions of visibility of the new moon. His excellent observations of lunar and solar eclipses were used by Dunthorne in 1749 to determine the secular acceleration of motion of the moon. He also provided very neat solutions by means of orthographic projection for some problems of spherical trigonometry.

In mathematics, he was the first to replace the use of Greek chords by sines, with a clear understanding of their superiority. He also developed the concept of cotangent and furnished their table in degrees.

He wrote a number of books on astronomy and trigonometry. His most famous book was his astronomical treatise with tables, which was translated into Latin in the l2th century and flourished as De scienta stellerum - De numeris stellerum et motibus. An old translation of this is available of the Vatican. His Zij was, in fact, more accurate than all others written by that time.
His treatise on astronomy was extremely influential in Europe till the Renaissance, with translations available in several languages. His original discoveries both in astronomy and trigonometry were of great consequence in the development of these sciences.

ABU RAIHAN AL-BIRUNI
( 973 - 1048 A.D. )
Abu Raihan Mohammad Ibn Ahmad al-Biruni was one of the well-known figures associated with the court of King Mahmood Ghaznavi, who was one of the famous Muslim kings of the 11th century A.D. Al-Biruni was a versatile scholar and scientist who had equal facility in physics, metaphysics, mathematics, geography and history. Born in the city of Kheva near "Ural" in 973 A.D ., he was a contemporary of the well-known physician Ibn Sina. At an early age, the fame of his scholarship went around and when Sultan Mahmood Ghaznavi conquered his homeland, he took al-Biruni along with him in his journeys to India several times and thus he had the opportunity to travel all over India during a period of 20 years. He learnt Hindu philosophy, mathematics, geography and religion from the Pandits to whom he taught Greek and Arabic science and philosophy. He died in 1048 A.D. at the age of 75, after having spent 40 years in thus gathering knowledge and making his own original contributions to it.

He recorded observations of his travels through India in his well-known book Kitab al-Hind which gives a graphic account of the historical and social conditions of the sub-continent. At the end of this book he makes a mention of having translated two Sanskrit books into Arabic, one called Sakaya, which deals with the creation of things and their types, and the second, Patanjal dealing with what happens after the spirit leaves the body. His descriptions of India were so complete that even the Aein-i-Akbari written by Abu-al-Fadal during the reign of Akbar, 600 years later, owes a great deal to al-Biruni's book. He observed that the Indus valley must be considered as an ancient sea basin filled up with alluvials.

On his return from India, al-Biruni wrote his famous book Qanun-i Masoodi (al-Qanun al-Masudi, fi al-Hai'a wa al-Nujum), which he dedicated to Sultan Masood. The book discusses several theorems of astronomy, trigonometry, solar, lunar, and planetary motions and relative topics. In another well-known book al-Athar al-Baqia, he has attempted a connected account of ancient history of nations and the related geographical knowledge. In this book, he has discussed the rotation of the earth and has given correct values of latitudes and longitudes of various places. He has also made considerable contribution to several aspects of physical and economic geography in this book.

His other scientific contributions include the accurate determination of the densities of 18 different stones. He also wrote the Kitab-al-Saidana, which is an extensive materia medica that combines the then existing Arabic knowledge on the subject with the Indian medicine. His book the Kitab-al-Jamahir deals with the properties of various precious stones. He was also an astrologer and is reputed to have astonished people by the accuracy of his predictions. He gave a clear account of Hindu numerals, elaborating the principle of position. Summation of a geometric progression apropos of the chess game led to the number:
1616-1 = 18,44,6,744,073,709,551,619.

He developed a method for trisection of angle and other problems which cannot be solved with a ruler and a compass alone. Al-Biruni discussed, centuries before the rest of the world, the question whether the earth rotates around its axis or not. He was the fist to undertake experiments related to astronomical phenomena. His scientific method, taken together with that of other Muslim scientists, such as Ibn al-Haitham, laid down the early foundation of modern science. He ascertained that as compared with the speed of sound the speed of light is immense. He explained the working of natural springs and artesian wells by the hydrostatic principle of communicating vessels. His investigations included description of various monstrosities, including that known as "Siamese" twins. He observed that flowers have 3,4,5,6, or 18 petals, but never 7 or 9.

He wrote a number of books and treatises. Apart from Kitab-al-Hind (History and Geography of India), al-Qanun al-Masudi (Astronomy, Trigonometry), al-Athar al-Baqia (Ancient History and Geography), Kitab al-Saidana (Materia Medica) and Kitab al-Jamahir (Precious Stones) as mentioned above, his book al-Tafhim-li-Awail Sina'at at-Tanjim gives a summary of mathematics and astronomy.

He has been considered as one of the very greatest scientists of Islam, and, all considered, one of the greatest of all times. His critical spirit, love of truth, and scientific approach were combined with a sense of toleration. His enthusiasm for knowledge may be judged from his claim that the phrase Allah is Omniscient does not justify ignorance.

ABUL WAFA MUHAMMAD AL-BUZJANI
( 940 - 997 A.D. )
Abul Wafa Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Yahya Ibn Ismail al-Buzjani was born in Buzjan, Nishapur in 940 A.D. He flourished as a great mathematician and astronomer at Baghdad and died in 997/998 A.D. He learnt mathematics in Baghdad. In 959 A.D. he migrated to Iraq and lived there till his death.

Abul Wafa's main contribution lies in several branches of mathematics, especially geometry and trigonometry. In geometry, his contribution comprises solution of geometrical problems with opening of the compass; construction of a square equivalent to other squares; regular polyhedra; construction of regular hectagon taking for its side half the side of the equilateral triangle inscribed in the same circle; constructions of parabola by points and geometrical solution of the equations:
x4 =a and x4 + ax3 = b

Abul Wafa's contribution to the development of trigonometry was extensive. He was the first to show the generality of the sine theorem relative to spherical triangles. He developed a new method of constructing sine tables, the value of sin 30' being correct to the eighth decimal place.

He also developed relations for sine (a + b) and the formula:
2sin2 - a/2 -= 1-cos a, and sin a = 2 sin - a/2 cos - a/2 In addition, he made a special study of the tangent and calculated a table of tangents. He introduced the secant and cosecant for the first time, knew the relations between the trigonometric lines, which are now used to define them, and undertook extensive studies on conics.

Apart from being a mathematician, Abul Wafa also contributed to astronomy. In this field he discussed different movements of the moon, and discovered 'variation'. He was also one of the last Arabic translators and commentators of Greek works.

He wrote a large number of books on mathematics and other subjects, most of which have been lost or exist in modified forms. His contribution includes Kitab 'Ilm al-Hisab, a practical book of arithmetic, al-Kitab al-Kamil (the Complete Book), Kitab al-Handsa (Applied Geometry). Apart from this, he wrote rich commentaries on Euclid, Diophantos and al-Khawarizmi, but all of these have been lost. His books now extant include Kitab 'Ilm al-Hisab, Kitab al-Handsa and Kitab al-Kamil.

His astronomical knowledge on the movements of the moon has been criticized in that, in the case of 'variation' the third inequality of the moon as he discussed was the second part of the 'evection'.. But, according to Sedat, what he discovered was the same that was discovered by Tycho Brache six centuries later. Nonetheless, his contribution to trigonometry was extremely significant in that he developed the knowledge on the tangent and introduced the secant and cosecant for the first time; in fact a sizable part of today's trigonometry can be traced back to him.

ABU AL-NASR AL-FARABI
( 870 - 950 A.D.)
Abu Nasr Mohammad Ibn al-Farakh al-Farabi was born in a small village Wasij, near Farab in Turkistan in 259 A.H. (870 A.D.). His parents were originally of Persian descent, but his ancestors had migrated to Turkistan. Known as al-Phrarabius in Europe, Farabi was the son of a general. He completed his earlier education at Farab and Bukhara but, later on, he went to Baghdad for higher studies, where he studied and worked for a long time viz., from 901 A.D. to 942 A.D. During this period he acquired mastery over several languages as well as various branches of knowledge and technology. He lived through the reign of six Abbasid Caliphs. As a philosopher and scientist, he acquired great proficiency in various branches of learning and is reported to have been an expert in different languages.

Farabi traveled to many distant lands and studied for some time in Damascus and Egypt, but repeatedly came back to Baghdad, until he visited Saif al-Daula's court in Halab (Allepo). He became one of the constant companions of the King, and it was here at Halab that his fame spread far and wide. During his early years he was a Qadi (Judge), but later on the took up teaching as his profession. During the course of his career, he had suffered great hardships and at one time was the caretaker of a garden. He died a bachelor in Damascus in 339 A.H. /950 A.D. at the age of 80 years.

Farabi contributed considerably to science, philosophy, logic, sociology, medicine, mathematics and music. His major contributions seem to be in philosophy, logic and sociology and, of course, stands out as an Encyclopedist. As a philosopher, he may be classed as a Neoplatonist who tried to synthesize Platonism and Aristotelism with theology and he wrote such rich commentaries on Aristotle's physics, meteorology, logic, etc., in addition to a large number of books on several other subjects embodying his original contribution, that he came to. be known as the 'Second Teacher' ( al-Mou 'allim al-Thani ) Aristotle being the First. One of the important contributions of Farabi was to make the study of logic more easy by dividing it into two categories viz., Takhayyul (idea) and Thubut (proof).

In sociology he wrote several books out of which Ara Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila became famous. His books on psychology and metaphysics were largely based on his own work. He also wrote a book on music, captioned Kitab al-Musiqa. He was a great expert in the art and science of music and invented several musical instruments, besides contributing to the knowledge of musical notes. It has been reported that he could play his instrument so well as to make people laugh or weep at will. In physics he demonstrated the existence of void.

Although many of his books have been lost, 117 are known, out of which 43 are on logic,11 on metaphysics, 7 on ethics, 7 on political science, 17 on music, medicine and sociology, while 11 are commentaries. Some of his more famous books include the book Fusus al-Hikam, which remained a text book of philosophy for several centuries at various centers of learning and is still taught at some of the institutions in the East. The book Kitab al-Ihsa al-Ulum discusses classification and fundamental principles of science in a unique and useful manner. The book Ara Ahl al-Madina al-Fadila 'The Model City' is a significant early contribution to sociology and political science.

Farabi exercised great influence on science and knowledge for several centuries. Unfortunately, the book Theology of Aristotle, as was available to him at that time, was regarded by him as genuine, although later on it turned out to be the work of some Neoplatonic writer. Despite this, he was regarded the Second Teacher in philosophy for centuries and his work, aimed at synthesis of philosophy and sufism, paved the way for Ibn Sina's work.

AL-FARGHANI
(c. 860)
Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani, born in Farghana, Transoxiana, was one of the most distinguished astronomers in the service of al-Mamun and his successors. He wrote "Elements of Astronomy" ( Kitab fi al-Harakat al-Samawiya wa Jawami Ilm al-Nujum i.e. the book on celestial motion and thorough science of the stars), which was translated into Latin in the l2th century and exerted great influence upon European astronomy before Regiomontanus. He accepted Ptolemy's theory and value of the precession, but thought that it affected not only the stars but also the planets. He determined the diameter of the earth to be 6,500 miles, and found the greatest distances and also the diameters of the planets.

AL-Farghani's activities extended to engineering. According to Ibn Tughri Birdi, he supervised the construction of the Great Nilometer at al-Fustat (old Cairo). It was completed in 861, the year in which the Caliph al-Mutawakkil, who ordered the construction, died. But engineering was not al-Farghani's forte, as transpires from the following story narrated by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a.

Al-Mutawakkil had entrusted the two sons of Musa ibn Shakir, Muhammad and Ahmad, with supervising the digging of a canal named al-Ja'fari. They delegated the work to AL-Farghani, thus deliberately ignoring a better engineer, Sind ibn Ali, whom, out of professional jealousy, they had caused to be sent to Baghdad, away from al-Mutawakkil's court in Samarra. The canal was to run through the new city, al-Ja'fariyya, which al-Mutawakkil had built near Samarra on the Tigris and named after himself. Al-Farghani committed a grave error, making the beginning of the canal deeper than the rest, so that not enough water would run through the length of the canal except when the Tigris was high. News of this angered the Caliph, and the two brothers were saved from severe punishment only by the gracious willingness of Sind ibn Ali to vouch for the correctness of al-Farghani's calculations, thus risking his own welfare and possibly his life. As had been correctly predicted by astrologers, however, al-Mutawakkil was murdered shortly before the error became apparent. The explanation given for Al Farghani's mistake is that being a theoretician rather than a practical engineer, he never successfully completed a construction.

The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim, written in 987, ascribes only two works to AL-Farghani : ( l) "The Book of Chapters, a summary of the Almagest" (Kitab al-Fusul, Ikhtiyar al-Majisti ) and (2) "Book on the Construction of Sun-dials" (Kitab 'Amal al-Rukhamat).

The Jawami, or 'The Elements' as we shall call it, was Al-Farghani's best-known and most influential work. Abd al-Aziz al-Qabisi (d. 967) wrote a commentary on it, which is preserved in the Istanbul manuscript, Aya Sofya 4832, fols. 97v-114v. Two Latin translations followed in the l2th century. Jacob Anatoli produced a Hebrew translation of the book that served as a basis for a third Latin version, appearing in 1590, whereas Jacob Golius published a new Latin text together with the Arabic original in 1669. The influence of 'The Elements' on mediaeval Europe is clearly vindicated by the presence of innumerable Latin manuscripts in European libraries.

References to it in mediaeval writers are many, and there is no doubt that it was greatly responsible for spreading knowledge of Ptolemaic astronomy, at least until this role was taken over by Sacrobosco's Sphere. But even then, 'The Elements' of Al-Farghani continued to be used, and Sacrobosco's Sphere was evidently indebted to it. It was from 'The Elements' (in Gherard's translation) that Dante derived the astronomical knowledge displayed in the 'Vita nuova' and in the 'Convivio'.

ABU HAMID AL-GHAZALI
( 1058-1128 A.D. )
Abu Hamid Ibn Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tusi al-Shafi'i al-Ghazali was born in 1058 A.D. in Khorasan, Iran. His father died while he was still very young but he had the opportunity of getting education in the prevalent curriculum at Nishapur and Baghdad. Soon he acquired a high standard of scholarship in religion and philosophy and was honored by his appointment as a Professor at the Nizamiyah University of Baghdad, which was recognized as one of the most reputed institutions of learning in the golden era of Muslim history.

After a few years, however, he gave up his academic pursuits and worldly interests and became a wandering ascetic. This. was a process (period) of mystical transformation. Later, he resumed his teaching duties, but again left these. An era of solitary life, devoted to contemplation and writing then ensued, which led to the author- ship of a number of everlasting hooks. He died in 1128 A.D. at Baghdad.

Ghazali's major contribution lies in religion, philosophy and sufism. A number of Muslim philosophers had been following and developing several viewpoints of Greek philosophy, including the Neoplatonic philosophy, and this was leading to conflict with several Islamic teachings. On the other hand, the movement of sufism was assuming such excessive proportions as to avoid observance of obligatory prayers and duties of Islam. Based on his unquestionable scholarship and personal mystical experience, Ghazali sought to rectify these trends, both in philosophy and sufism.

In philosophy, Ghazali upheld the approach of mathematics and exact sciences as essentially correct. However, he adopted the techniques of Aristotelian logic and the Neoplatonic procedures and employed these very tools to lay bare the flaws and lacunas of the then prevalent Neoplatonic philosophy arid to diminish the negative influences of Aristotelianism and excessive rationalism. In contrast to some of the Muslim philosophers, e.g., Farabi, he portrayed the inability of reason to comprehend the absolute and the infinite. Reason could not transcend the finite and was limited to the observation of the relative. Also, several Muslim philosophers had held that the universe was finite in space but infinite in time. Ghazali argued that an infinite time was related to an infinite space. With his clarity of thought and force of argument, he was able to create a balance between religion and reason, and identified their respective spheres as being the infinite and the finite, respectively.

In religion, particularly mysticism, he cleansed the approach of sufism of its excesses and reestablished the authority of the orthodox religion. Yet, he stressed the importance of genuine sufism, which he maintained was the path to attain the absolute truth.

He was a prolific writer. His immortal books include Tuhafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), Ihya al-'Ulum al-Islamia (The Rivival of the Religious Sciences), "The Beginning of Guidance and his Autobiography", "Deliverance from Error". Some of his works were translated into European languages in the Middle Ages. He also wrote a summary of astronomy.

Ghazali's influence was deep and everlasting. He is one of the greatest theologians of Islam. His theological doctrines penetrated Europe, influenced Jewish and Christian Scholasticism and several of his arguments seem to have been adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas in order to similarly reestablish the authority of orthodox Christian religion in the West. So forceful was his argument in the favor of religion that he was accused of damaging the cause of philosophy and, in the Muslim Spain, Ibn Rushd (Averros) wrote a rejoinder to his Tuhafut.

AL-IDRISI
( 1099 -1166 A.D. )
Abu Abdallah Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Abdallah Ibn Idris al-Qurtubi al-Hasani, was born in Ceuta, Spain, in 1099 A.D. He was educated in Cordova. Later he traveled far and wide in connection with his studies and then flourished at the Norman court in Palermo. The date of his death is controversial, being either 1166 or 1180 A.D.

Biographical notes on him are to be found rather rarely, and according to F. Pons Boigues the underlying reason is the fact that the Arab biographers considered al-Idrisi to be a renegade, since he had been associated with the court of a Christian king and written in praise of him, in his work. The circumstances which led him to settle in Sicily at the court of Roger II are not on record.

His major contribution lies in medicinal plants as presented in his several books, specially Kitab al-Jami-li-Sifat Ashtat al-Nabatat. He studied and reviewed all the literature on the subject of medicinal plants and formed the opinion that very little original material had been added to this branch of knowledge since the early Greek work. He, therefore, collected plants and data not reported earlier and added this to the subject of botany, with special reference to medicinal plants. Thus, a large number of new drugs plants together with their evaluation became available to the medical practitioners. He has given the names of the drugs in six languages : Syriac, Greek, Persian, Hindi, Latin and Berber.

In addition to the above, he made original contributions to geography, especially as related to economics, physical factors and cultural aspects. He made a planishere in silver for King Roger II, and described the world in Al-Kitab al-Rujari (Roger's Book), also entitled Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi Ikhtiraq al-A faq (The delight of him who desires to journey through the climates). This is practically a geographical encyclopedia of the time, containing information not only on Asia and Africa, but also Western countries.

Al-Idrisi, later on, also compiled another geographical encyclopedia, larger than the former entitled Rawd-Unnas wa-Nuzhat al-Nafs ( Pleasure of men and delight of souls ) also known as Kitab al-Mamalik wa al Masalik.

Apart from botany and geography, Idrisi also wrote on fauna, zoology and therapeutical aspects. His work was soon translated into Latin and, especially, his books on geography remained popular both in the East and the West for several centuries.

IBN AL-BAITAR
( DIED 1248 A.D.)
Abu Muhammad Abdallah Ibn Ahmad Ibn al-Baitar Dhiya al-Din al-Malaqi was one of the greatest scientists of Muslim Spain and was the greatest botanist and pharmacist of the Middle Ages. He was born in the Spanish city of Malaqa (Malaga) towards the end of the l2th century. He learned botany from Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, a learned botanist, with whom he started collecting plants in and around Spain. In 1219 he left Spain on a plant-collecting expedition and traveled along the northern coast of Africa as far as Asia Minor. The exact modes of his travel (whether by land or sea) are not known, but the major stations he visited include Bugia, Qastantunia ( Constantinople), Tunis, Tripoli, Barqa and Adalia. After 1224 he entered the service of al-Kamil, the Egyptian Governor, and was appointed chief herbalist. In 1227 al-Kamil extended his domination to Damascus, and Ibn al-Baitar accompanied him there which provided him an opportunity to collect plants in Syria. His researches on plants extended over a vast area including Arabia and Palestine, which he either visited or managed to collect plants from stations located there. He died in Damascus in 1248.

Ibn Baitar's major contribution, Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al-Mu frada, is one of the greatest botanical compilations dealing with medicinal plants in Arabic. It enjoyed a high status among botanists up to the l6th century and is a systematic work that embodies earlier works, with due criticism, and adds a great part of original contribution. The encyclopedia comprises some 1,400 different items, largely medicinal plants and vegetables, of which about 200 plants were not known earlier. The book refers to the work of some 150 authors mostly Arabic, and it also quotes about 20 early Greek scientists. It was translated into Latin and published in 1758.

His second monumental treatise Kitab al-Mughni fi al-Adwiya al-Mu frada is an encyclopedia of medicine. The drugs are listed in accordance with their therapeutical value. Thus, its 20 different chapters deal with the plants bearing significance to diseases of head, ear, eye, etc. On surgical issues he has frequently quoted the famous Muslim surgeon, Abul Qasim Zahravi. Besides Arabic, Baitar, has given Greek and Latin names of the plants, thus facilitating transfer of knowledge.

Ibn Baitar's contributions are characterized by observation, analysis and classification and have exerted a profound influence on Eastern as well as Western botany and medicine. Though the Jami was translated/published late in the western languages as mentioned above, yet many scientists had earlier studied various parts of the book and made several references to it.

ABU ALI HASAN IBN AL-HAITHAM
( 965 - 1040 A.D.)
Abu Ali Hasan Ibn al-Haitham was one of the most eminent physicists, whose contributions to optics and the scientific methods are outstanding. Known in the West as Alhazen, Ibn aI-Hautham was born in 965 A. D. in Basrah, and was educated in Basrah and Baghdad. Thereafter, he went to Egypt, where he was asked to find ways of controlling the flood of the Nile. Being unsuccessful in this, he feigned madness until the death of Caliph al-Hakim. He also traveled to Spain and, during this period, he had ample time for his scientific pursuits, which included optics, mathematics, physics, medicine and development of scientific methods on each of which he has left several outstanding books.

He made a thorough examination of the passage of light through various media and discovered the laws of refraction. He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colors. His book Kitab-at-Manazir was translated into Latin in the Middle Ages, as also his book dealing with the colors of sunset. He dealt at length with the theory of various physical phenomena like shadows, eclipses, the rainbow, and speculated on the physical nature of light. He is the first to describe accurately the various parts of the eye and give a scientific explanation of the process of vision. He also attempted to explain binocular vision, and gave a correct explanation of the apparent increase in size of the sun and the moon when near the horizon. He is known for the earliest use of the camera obscura. He contradicted Ptolemy's and Euclid's theory of vision that objects are seen by rays of .light emanating from the eyes; according to him the rays originate in the object of vision and not in the eye. Through these extensive researches on optics, he has been considered as the father of modern optics.

The Latin translation of his main work, Kitab-at-Manazir, exerted a great influence upon Western science e.g. on the work of Roger Bacon and Kepler. It brought about a great progress in experimental methods. His research in catoptrics centered on spherical and parabolic mirrors and spherical aberration. He made the important observation that the radio between the angle of incidence and refraction does not remain constant and investigated the magnifying power of a lens. His catoptrics contain the important problem known as Alhazen's problem. It comprises drawing lines from two points in the plane of a circle meeting at a point on the circumference and making equal angles with the normal at that point. This leads to an equation of the fourth degree.

In his book Mizan al-Hikmah Ibn al-Haitham has discussed the density of the atmosphere and developed a relation between it and the height. He also studied atmospheric refraction. He discovered that the twilight only ceases or begins when the sun is 19 o below the horizon and attempted to measure the height of the atmosphere on that basis. He has also discussed the theories of attraction between masses, and it seems that he was aware of the magnitude of acceleration due to gravity.

His contribution to mathematics and physics was extensive. In mathematics, he developed analytical geometry by establishing linkage between algebra and geometry. He studied the mechanics of motion of a body and was the first to maintain that a body moves perpetually unless an external force stops it or changes its direction of motion. This would seem equivalent to the first law of motion.

The list of his books runs to 200 or so, very few of which have survived. Even his monumental treatise on optics survived through its Latin translation. During the Middle Ages his books on cosmology were translated into Latin, Hebrew and other languages. He has also written on the subject of evolution a book that deserves serious attention even today.

In his writing, one can see a clear development of the scientific methods as developed and applied by the Muslims and comprising the systematic observation of physical phenomena and their linking together into a scientific theory. This was a major breakthrough in scientific methodology, as distinct from guess and gesture, and placed scientific pursuits on a sound foundation comprising systematic relationship between observation, hypothesis and verification.
Ibn al-Haitham's influence on physical sciences in general, and optics in particular, has been held in high esteem and, in fact, it ushered in a new era in optical research, both in theory and practice.

IBN AL-NAFIS
( 1213 - 1288 A.D.)
Ala-al-Din Abu al-Hasan Ali Ibn Abi al-Hazm al-Qarshi al-Damashqi al-Misri was born in 607 A.H. of Damascus. He was educated at the Medical College-cum-Hospital founded by Nur al-Din Zangi. In medicine his teacher was Muhazzab al-Din Abd al-Rahim. Apart from medicine, Ibn al-Nafis learnt jurisprudence, literature and theology. He thus became a renowned expert on Shafi'i School of Jurisprudence as well as a reputed physician.

After acquiring his expertise in medicine and jurisprudence, he moved to Cairo where he was appointed as the Principal at the famous Nasri Hospital. Here he imparted training to a large number of medical specialists, including Ibn al-Quff al-Masihi, the famous surgeon. He also served at the Mansuriya School at Cairo. When he died in 678 A. H. he donated his house, library and clinic to the Mansuriya Hospital.

His major contribution lies in medicine. His approach comprised writing detailed commentaries on early works, critically evaluating them and adding his own original contribution. His major original contribution of great significance was his discovery of the blood's circulatory system, which was re-discovered by modern science after a lapse of three centuries. He was the first to correctly describe the constitution of the lungs and gave a description of the bronchi and the interaction between the human body's vessels for air and blood. Also, he elaborated the function of the coronary arteries as feeding the cardiac muscle.

The most voluminous of his books is Al-Shamil fi al-Tibb, which was designed to be an encyclopedia comprising 300 volumes, but it could not be completed due to his death. The manuscript is available at Damascus. His book on ophthalmology is largely an original contribution and is also extant. However, his book that became most famous was Mujaz al-Qanun and a number of commentaries were written on this. His own commentaries include one on Hippocrates' book. He wrote several volumes on Ibn Sina's Qanun, that are still extant. Likewise he wrote a commentary on Hunayn Ibn Ishaq's book. Another famous book embodying his original contribution was on the effects of diet on health, entitled Kitab al-Mukhtar fi al-Aghdhiya.

Ibn Al-Nafis' works integrated the then existing medical knowledge and enriched it, thus exerting great influence on the development of medical science, both in the East and the West. However, only one of his books was translated into Latin at early stages and, therefore, a part of his work remained unknown to Europe for a long time.

IBN KHALDUN
( 1382-1395 A.D.)
Abd al-Rahman Ibn Mohammad is generally known as Ibn Khaldun after a remote ancestor. His parents, originally Yemenite Arabs, had settled in Spain, but after the fall of Seville, had migrated to Tunisia. He was born in Tunisia in 1332 A.D., where he received his early education and where, still in his teens, he entered the service of the Egyptian ruler Sultan Barquq. His thirst for advanced know- ledge and a better academic setting soon made him leave this service and migrate to Fez. This was followed by a long period of unrest marked by contemporary political rivalries affecting his career. This turbulent period also included a three year refuge in a small village Qalat Ibn Salama in Algeria, which provided him with the opportunity to write Muqaddimah, the first volume of his world history that won him an immortal place among historians, sociologists and philosophers. The uncertainty of his career still continued, with Egypt becoming his final abode where he spent his last 24 years. Here he lived a life of fame and respect, marked by his appointment as the Chief Malakite Judge and lecturing at the AL-Azhar University, but envy caused his removal from his high judicial office as many as five times.

Ibn Khaldun's chief contribution lies in philosophy of history and sociology. He sought to write a world history preambled by a first volume aimed at an analysis of historical events. This volume, commonly known as Muqaddimah or 'Prolegomena', was based on Ibn Khaldun's unique approach and original contribution and became a masterpiece in literature on philosophy of history and sociology. The chief concern of this monumental work was to identify psychological, economic, environmental and social facts that contribute to the advancement of human civilization and the currents of history. In this context, he analyzed the dynamics of group relationships and showed how group-feelings, al-'Asabiyya, give rise to the ascent of a new civilization and political power and how, later on, its diffusion into a more general civilization invites the advent of a still new 'Asabiyya in its pristine form. He identified an almost rhythmic repetition of rise and fall in human civilization, and analyzed factors contributing to it. His contribution to history is marked by the fact that, unlike most earlier writers interpreting history largely in a political context, he emphasized environmental, sociological, psychological and economic factors governing the apparent events. This revolutionized the science of history and also laid the foundation of Umraniyat (Sociology).

Apart from the Muqaddimah that became an important independent book even during the lifetime of the author, the other volumes of his world history Kitab al-I'bar deal with the history of Arabs, contemporary Muslim rulers, contemporary European rulers, ancient history of Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Persians, etc., Islamic History, Egyptian history and North-African history, especially that of Berbers and tribes living in the adjoining areas. The last volume deals largely with the events of his own life and is known as Al-Tasrif. This was also written in a scientific manner and initiated a new analytical tradition in the art of writing autobiography A book on mathematics written by him is not extant.

Ibn Khaldun's influence on the subject of history, philosophy of history, sociology, political science and education has remained paramount ever since his life. His books have been translated into many languages, both in the East and the West, and have inspired subsequent development of these sciences. For instance, Prof. Gum Ploughs and Kolosio consider Muqaddimah as superior in scholarship to Machiavelli's The Prince written a century later, as the former bases the diagnosis more on cultural, sociological, economic and psychological factors.

IBN RUSHD
( 1128 - 1198 A.D.)
Abu'l Waleed Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes in the West, was born in 1128 A.D. in Cordova, where his father and grandfather had both been judges. His grandfather was well versed in Fiqh (MaIiki School) and was also the Imam of the Jamia Mosque of Cordova. The young Ibn Rushd received his education in Cordova and lived a quiet life, devoting most of his time to learned pursuits. He studied philosophy and law from Abu J'afar Haroon and from Ibn Baja; he also studied medicine.

Al-Hakam, the famous Umayyad Caliph of Spain, had constructed a magnificent library in Cordova, which housed 500,000 books. He himself had studied many of these and made brief marginal comments on them. This rich collection laid the foundation for intellectual study in Spain and provided the background for men like Ibn Rushd, who lived 2 centuries later.

Abu Yaqub, the Caliph of Morocco, called him to his capital and appointed him as his physician in place of Ibn Tufail. His son Yaqub al-Mansur retained him for some time but soon Ibn Rushd's views on theology and philosophy drew the Caliph's wrath. All his books, barring strictly scientific ones, were burnt and he was banished to Lucena. However, as a result of intervention of several leading scholars he was forgiven after about four years and recalled to Morocco in 1198; but he died towards the end of the same year. Ibn Rushd made remarkable contributions in philosophy, logic, medicine, music and jurisprudence. In medicine his well-known book Kitab al-Kulyat fi al-Tibb was written before 1162 A.D. Its Latin translation was known as 'Colliget'. In it, Ibn Rushd has thrown light on various aspects of medicine, including the diagnoses, cure and prevention of diseases. The book concentrates on specific areas in comparison of Ibn Sina's wider scope of at-Qanun, but contains several original observations of Ibn Rushd.

In philosophy, his most important work Tuhafut al-Tuhafut was written in response to al-Ghazali's work. Ibn Rushd was criticized by many Muslim scholars for this book, which, nevertheless, had a profound influence on European thought, at least until the beginning of modern philosophy and experimental science. His views on fate were that man is neither in full control of his destiny nor is it fully predetermined for him. He wrote three commentaries on the works of Aristotle, as these were known then through Arabic translations. The shortest Jami may be considered as a summary of the subject. The intermediate was Talkhis and the longest was the Tafsir. These three commentaries would seem to correspond to different stages in the education of pupils; the short one was meant for the beginners, then the intermediate for the students familiar with the subject, and finally the longest one for advanced studies. The longest commentary was, in fact, an original contribution as it was largely based on his analysis including interpretation of Qu'ranic concepts.

In the field of music, Ibn Rushd wrote a commentary on Aristotle's book De Anima. This book was translated into Latin by Mitchell the Scott.

In astronomy he wrote a treatise on the motion of the sphere, Kitab fi-Harakat al-Falak. He also summarized Almagest and divided it into two parts: description of the spheres, and movement of the spheres. This summary of the Almagest was translated from Arabic into Hebrew by Jacob Anatoli in 1231.

According to Ibn al-Abbar, Ibn Rushd's writings spread over 20,000 pages, the most famous of which deal with philosophy, medicine and jurisprudence. On medicine alone he wrote 20 books. Regarding jurisprudence, his book Bidayat al-Mujtahid wa-Nihayat-al-Muqtasid has been held by Ibn Jafar Zahabi as possibly the best book on the Maliki School of Fiqh. Ibn Rushd's writings were translated into various languages, including Latin, English, German and Hebrew. Most of his commentaries on philosophy are preserved in the Hebrew translations, or in Latin translations from the Hebrew, and a few in the original Arabic, generally in Hebrew script. This reveals his wider acceptance in the West in comparison to the East. The commentary on zoology is entirely lost. Ibn Rushd also wrote commentaries on Plato's Republic, Galen's treatise on fevers, al-Farabi's logic, etc. Eighty-seven of his books are still extant.

Ibn Rushd has been held as one of the greatest thinkers and scientists of the l2th century. According to Philip Hitti, Ibn Rushd influenced Western thought from the l2th to the l6th centuries. His books were included in the syllabi of Paris and other universities till the advent of modern experimental sciences.

IBN SINA
( 980 - 1037 A.D.)
Abu Ali al-Hussain Ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina was born in 980 A.D. at Afshana near Bukhara. The young Bu Ali received his early education in Bukhara, and by the age of ten had become well versed in the study of the Qur'an and various sciences. He started studying philosophy by reading various Greek, Muslim and other books on this subject and learnt logic and some other subjects from Abu Abdallah Natili, a famous philosopher of the time. While still young, he attained such a degree of expertise in medicine that his renown spread far and wide. At the age of 17, he was fortunate in curing Nooh Ibn Mansoor, the King of Bukhhara, of an illness in which all the well-known physicians had given up hope. On his recovery, the King wished to reward him, but the young physician only desired permission to use his uniquely stocked library.

On his father's death, Bu Ali left Bukhara and traveled to Jurjan where Khawarizm Shah welcomed him. There, he met his famous contemporary Abu Raihan al-Biruni. Later he moved to Ray and then to Hamadan, where he wrote his famous book Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb. Here he treated Shams al-Daulah, the King of Hamadan, for severe colic. From Hamadan he moved to Isphahan, where he completed many of his monumental writings. Nevertheless, he continued traveling and the excessive mental exertion as well as political turmoil spoilt his health. Finally, he returned to Hamadan where he died in 1037 A.D.

He was the most famous physician, philosopher, encyclopedist, mathematician and astronomer of his time. His major contribution to medical science was his famous book al-Qanun, known as the "Canon" in the West. The Qanun fi al-Tibb is an immense encyclopedia of medicine extending over a million words. It surveyed the entire medical knowledge available from ancient and Muslim sources. Due to its systematic approach, "formal perfection as well as its intrinsic value, the Qanun superseded Razi's Hawi, Ali Ibn Abbas's Maliki, and even the works of Galen, and remained supreme for six centuries". In addition to bringing together the then available knowledge, the book is rich with the author's original contribution. His important original contribution includes such advances as recognition of the contagious nature of phthisis and tuberculosis; distribution of diseases by water and soil, and interaction between psychology and health. In addition to describing pharmacological methods, the book described 760 drugs and became the most authentic materia medica of the era. He was also the first to describe meningitis and made rich contributions to anatomy, gynaecology and child health.

His philosophical encyclopedia Kitab al-Shifa was a monumental work, embodying a vast field of knowledge from philosophy to science. He classified the entire field as follows: theoretical knowledge: physics, mathematics and metaphysics; and practical knowledge: ethics, economics and politics. His philosophy synthesizes Aristotelian tradition, Neoplatonic influences and Muslim theology.

Ibn Sina also contributed to mathematics, physics, music and other fields. He explained the "casting out of nines" and its application to the verification of squares and cubes. He made several astronomical observations, and devised a contrivance similar to the vernier, to increase the precision of instrumental readings. In physics, his contribution comprised the study of different forms of energy, heat, light and mechanical, and such concepts as force, vacuum and infinity. He made the important observation that if the. perception of light is due to the emission of some sort of particles by the luminous source, the speed of light must be finite. He propounded an interconnection between time and motion, and also made investigations on specific gravity and used an air thermometer.

In the field of music, his contribution was an improvement over Farabi's work and was far ahead of knowledge prevailing elsewhere on the subject. Doubling with the fourth and fifth was a 'great' step towards the harmonic system and doubling with the third' seems to have also been allowed. Ibn Sina observed that in the series of consonances represented by ( n + 1 ) /n, the ear is unable to distinguish them when n = 45. In the field of chemistry, he did not believe in the possibility of chemical transmutation because, in his opinion, the metals differed in a fundamental sense. These views were radically opposed to those prevailing at the time. His treatise on minerals was one of the "main" sources of geology of the Christian encyclopedists of the thirteenth century. Besides Shifa his well-known treatises in philosophy are al-Najat and Isharat.

ABU MARWAN IBN ZUHR
( 1091 - 1161 A. D. )
Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik Ibn Zuhr was born at Seville in 1091/c. 1094 A.D. After completing his education and specializing in medicine, he entered the service of Almoravides (Al-Murabatun), but after their defeat by the AL-Mohades (Al-Muwahadun), he served under 'Abd al-Mu'min, the first Muwahid ruler. He died in Seville in 1161/c. 1162 A.D. As confirmed by George Sarton, he was not a Jew, but an orthodox Muslim.

Ibn Zuhr was one of the greatest physicians and clinicians of the Muslim golden era and has rather been held by some historians of science as the greatest of them. Contrary to the general practice of the Muslim scholars of that era, he confined his work to only one field : medicine. This enabled him to produce works of everlasting fame.

As a physician, he made several discoveries and breakthroughs. He described correctly, for the first time, scabies, the itch mite and may thus be regarded as the first parasitologist. Likewise, he prescribed tracheotomy and direct feeding through the gullet and rectum in the cases where normal feeding was not possible. He also gave clinical descriptions of mediastinal tumors, intestinal phthisis, inflammation of the middle ear, pericarditis, etc.

His contribution was chiefly contained in the monumental works written by him; out of these, however, only. three are extant. Kitab al-Taisir fi al-Mudawat wa al-Tadbir (Book of Simplification concerning Therapeutics and Diet), written at the request of Ibn Rushd (Averroes), is the most important work of Ibn Zuhr. It describes several of Ibn Zuhr's original contributions. The book gives in detail pathological conditions, followed by therapy. His Kitab al-Iqtisad fi Islah al-Anfus wa al-Ajsad (Book of the Middle Course concerning the Reformation of Souls and the Bodies) gives a summary of diseases, therapeutics and hygiene written specially for the benefit of the layman. Its initial part is a valuable discourse on psychology. Kitab al-Aghziya (Book on Foodstuffs) describes different types of food and drugs and their effects on health.

Ibn Zuhr in his works lays stress on observation and experiment and his contribution greatly influenced the medical science for several centuries both in the East and the West. His books were translated into Latin and Hebrew and remained popular in Europe as late as the advent of the l8th century.

JABIR IBN HAIYAN
( Died 803 A.D. )
Jabir Ibn Haiyan, the alchemist Geber of the Middle Ages, is generally known as the father of chemistry. Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan, sometimes called al-Harrani and al-Sufi, was the son of the druggist ( Attar). The precise date of his birth is the subject of some discussion, but it is established that he practiced medicine and alchemy in Kufa around 776 A.D. He is reported to have studied under Imam Ja'far Sadiq and the Ummayed prince Khalid Ibn Yazid. In his early days, he practiced medicine and was under the patronage of the Barmaki Vizir during the Abbasid Caliphate of Haroon al-Rashid. He shared some of the effects of the downfall of the Barmakis and was placed under house arrest in Kufa, where he died in 803 A.D.

Jabir's major contribution was in the field of chemistry. He introduced experimental investigation into alchemy, which rapidly changed its character into modern chemistry. On the ruins of his well-known laboratory remained after centuries, but his fame rests on over 100 monumental treatises, of which 22 relate to chemistry and alchemy. His contribution of fundamental importance to chemistry includes perfection of scientific techniques such as crystallization, distillation, calcination, sublimation and evaporation and development of several instruments for the same. The fact of early development of chemistry as a distinct branch of science by the Arabs, instead of the earlier vague ideas, is well-established and the very name chemistry is derived from the Arabic word al-Kimya, which was studied and developed extensively by the Muslim scientists.

Perhaps Jabir's major practical achievement was the discovery of mineral and others acids, which he prepared for the first time in his alembic (Anbique). Apart from several contributions of basic nature to alchemy, involving largely the preparation of new compounds and development of chemical methods, he also developed a number of applied chemical processes, thus becoming a pioneer in the field of applied science. His achievements in this field include preparation of various metals, development of steel, dyeing of cloth and tanning of leather, varnishing of water-proof cloth, use of manganese dioxide in glass-making, prevention of rusting, lettering in gold, identification of paints, greases, etc. During the course of these practical endeavours, he also developed aqua regia to dissolve gold. The alembic in his great invention, which made easy and systematic the process of distillation. Jabir laid great stress on experimentation and accuracy in his work.

Based on their properties, he has described three distinct types of substances. First, spirits i.e. those which vaporize on heating, like camphor, arsenic and ammonium chloride; secondly, metals, for example, gold, silver, lead, copper, iron; and thirdly, the category of compounds which can be converted into powders. He thus paved the way for such later classification as metals, non-metals and volatile substances.

Although known as an alchemist, he did not seem to have seriously pursued the preparation of noble metals as an alchemist; instead he devoted his effort to the development of basic chemical methods and study of mechanisms of chemical reactions in them- selves and thus helped evolve chemistry as a science from the legends of alchemy. He emphasized that, in chemical reactions, definite quantities of various substances are involved and thus can be said to have paved the way for the law of constant proportions.

A large number of books are included in his corpus. Apart from chemistry, he also contributed to other sciences such as medicine and astronomy. His books on chemistry, including his Kitab-al-Kimya, and Kitab al-Sab'een were translated into Latin and various European languages. These translations were popular in Europe for several centuries arid have influenced the evolution of modern chemistry. Several technical terms devised by Jabir, such as alkali, are today found in various European languages and have become part of scientific vocabulary. Only a few of his books have been edited and published, while several others preserved in Arabic have yet to be annotated and published.

Doubts have been expressed as to whether all the voluminous work included in the corpus is his own contribution or it contains later commentaries/additions by his followers. According to Sarton, the true worth of his work would only be known when all his books have been edited and published. His religious views and philosophical concepts embodied in the corpus have been criticized but, apart from the question of their authenticity, it is to be emphasized that the major contribution of Jabir lies in the field of chemistry and not in religion. His various breakthroughs e.g., preparation of acids for the first time, notably nitric, hydrochloric, citric and tartaric acids, and emphasis on systematic experimentation are outstanding and it is on the basis of such work that he can justly be regarded as the father of modern chemistry. In the words of Max Mayerhaff, the development of chemistry in Europe can be traced directly to Jabir Ibn Haiyan.

MOHAMMAD BIN MUSA AL-KHAWARIZMI
( Died 840 A. D.)
Abu Abdullah Mohammad Ibn Musa al-Khawarizmi was born at Khawarizm ( Kheva), south of Aral sea. Very little is known about his early life, except for the fact that his parents had migrated to a place south of Baghdad. The exact dates of his birth and death are also not known, but it is established that he flourished under Al-Mamun at Baghdad through 813-833 and probably died around 840 A.D.

Khawarizmi was a mathematician, astronomer and geographer. He was perhaps one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived, as, in fact, he was the founder of several branches and basic concepts of mathematics. In the words of Phillip Hitti, he influenced mathematical thought to a greater extent than any other mediaeval writer. His work on algebra was outstanding, as he not only initiated the subject in a systematic form but he also developed it to the extent of giving analytical solutions of linear and quadratic equations, which established him as the founder of Algebra. The very name Algebra has been derived from his famous book Al-Jabr wa-al-Mfuqabilah. His arithmetic synthesized Greek and Hindu knowledge and also contained his own contribution of fundamental importance to mathematics and science. Thus, he explained the use of zero, a numeral of fundamental importance developed by the Arabs. Similarly, he developed the decimal system so that the overall system of numerals 'algorithm' or 'algorizm' is named after him. In addition to introducing the Indian system of numerals (now generally known as Arabic numerals), he developed at length several arithmetical procedures, including operations on fractions. It was through his work that the system of numerals was first introduced to Arabs and later to Europe, through its translations in European languages. He developed in detail trigonometric tables containing the sine functions, which were probably extrapolated to tangent functions by Maslama. He also perfected the geometric representation of comic sections and developed the calculus of two errors, which practically led him to the concept of differentiation. He is also reported to have collaborated in the degree measurements ordered by Mamun al-Rashid were aimed at measuring of volume and circumference of the earth.

The development of astronomical tables by him was a significant contribution to the science of astronomy, on which he also wrote a book. The contribution of Khawarizmi to geography is also outstanding, in that not only did he revise Ptolemy's views on geography, but also corrected them in detail as well as his map of the world. His other contributions include original work related to clocks, sun-dials and astrolabes.

Several of his books were translated into Latin in the early l2th century. In fact, his book on arithmetic, Kitab al-Jam 'a wal- Ta freeq bil Hisab al-Hindi, was lost in Arabic but survived in a Latin translation. His book on algebra, Al-Maqala fi Hisab-al Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, was also translated into Latin in the l2th century, and it was this translation which introduced this new science to the West "completely unknown till then". He astronomical tables were also translated into European languages and, later, into Chinese. His geography captioned Kitab Surat-al-Ard, together with its maps, was also translated. In addition, he wrote a book on the Jewish calendar Istihhraj Tarikh al-Yahud, and two books on the astrolabe. He also wrote Kitab al-Tarikh and his book on sun-dials was captioned Kitab al-Rukhmet, but both of them have been lost.

The influence of Khawarizmi on the growth of science, in general, and mathematics, astronomy and geography in particular, is well established in history. Several of his books were readily translated into a number of other languages, and, in fact, constituted the university text-books till the l6th century. His approach was systematic and logical, and not only did he bring together the then prevailing knowledge on various branches of science, particularly mathematics, but also enriched it through his original contribution. No doubt he has been held in high repute throughout the centuries since then.

OMAR AL-KHAYYAM
( 1044 - 1123 A. D.)
Ghiyath al-Din Abul Fateh Omar Ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam was born at Nishapur, the provincial capital of Khurasan around 1044 A.D. (c. 1038 to 1048). Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, physician and poet, he is commonly known as Omar Khayyam. Khayyam means the tent-maker, and although generally considered as Persian, it has also been suggested that he could have belonged to the Khayyami tribe of Arab origin who might have settled in Persia. Little is known about his early life, except for the fact that he was educated at Nishapur and lived there and at Samarqand for most of his life. He was a contemporary of Nizam al-Mulk Tusi. Contrary to the available opportunities, he did not like to be employed at the King's court and led a calm life devoted to search for knowledge. He traveled to the great centers of learning, Samarqand, Bukhara, Balkh and Isphahan in order to study further and exchange views with the scholars there. While at Samarqand he was patronized by a dignitary, Abu Tahir. He died at Nishapur in 1123-24.

Algebra would seem to rank first among the fields to which he contributed. He made an attempt to classify most algebraic equations, including the third degree equations and, in fact, offered solutions for a number of them. This includes geometric solutions of cubic equations and partial geometric solutions of most other equations. His book Maqalat fi al-Jabr wa al-Muqabila is a masterpiece on algebra and has great importance in the development of algebra. His remarkable classification of equations is based on the complexity of the equations, as the higher the degree of an equation, the more terms, or combinations of terms, it will contain. Thus, Khayyam recognizes 13 different forms of cubic equation. His method of solving equations is largely geometrical and depends upon an ingenious selection of proper conics. He also developed the binomial expansion when the exponent is a positive integer. In fact, he has been considered to be the first to find the binomial theorem and determine binomial coefficients. In geometry, he studied generalities of Euclid and contributed to the theory of parallel lines.

The Saljuq Sultan, Malikshah Jalal al-Din, called him to the new observatory at Ray around 1074 and assigned him the task of determining a correct solar calendar. This had become necessary in view of the revenue collections and other administrative matters that were to be performed at different times of the year. Khayyam introduced a calendar that was remarkably accurate, and was named as Al-Tarikh-al-Jalali. It had an error of one day in 3770 years and was thus even superior to the Georgian calendar ( error of 1 day in 3330 years).

His contributions to other fields of science include a study of generalities of Euclid, development of methods for the accurate determination of specific gravity, etc. In metaphysics, he wrote three books Risala Dar Wujud and the recently discovered Nauruznamah. He was also a renowned astronomer and a physician.

Apart from being a scientist, Khayyam was also a well-known poet. In this capacity, he has become more popularly known in the Western world since 1839, when Edward Fitzgerald published an English translation of his Rubaiyat (quatrains). This has since become one of the most popular classics of the world literature. It should be appreciated that it is practically impossible to exactly translate any literary work into another language, what to talk of poetry, especially when it involves mystical and philosophical messages of deep complexity. Despite this, the popularity of the translation of Rubaiyat would indicate the worth of his rich thought.
Khayyam wrote a large number of books and monographs in the above areas. Out of these, 10 books and thirty monographs have been identified. Of these, four concern mathematics, three physics, three metaphysics, one algebra and one geometry.

His influence on the development of mathematics in general and analytical geometry, in particular, has been immense. His work remained ahead of others for centuries till the times of Descartes, who applied the same geometrical approach in solving cubics. His frame as a mathematician has been partially eclipsed by his popularity as a poet; nonetheless his contribution as a philosopher and scientist has been of significant value in furthering the frontiers of human knowledege.

YAQUB IBN ISHAQ AL-KINDI
( 800 - 873 A.D.)
Abu Yousuf Yaqub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi was born at Kufa around 800 A.D. His father was an official of Haroon al-Rashid. Al-Kindi was a contemporary of al-Mamun, al-Mu'tasim and al-Mutawakkil and flourished largely at Baghdad. He was formally employed by Mutawakkil as a calligrapher. On account of his philosophical views, Mutawakkil was annoyed with him and confiscated all his books. These were, however, returned latex on. He died in 873 A.D. during the reign of al-M'utamid.

Al-Kindi was a philosopher, mathematician, physicist, astronomer physician, geographer and even an expert in music. It is surprising that he made original contributions to all of these fields. On account of his work he became known as the philosopher of the Arabs.

In mathematics, he wrote four books on the number system and laid the foundation of a large part of modern arithmetic. No doubt the Arabic system of numerals was largely developed by al-Khawarizmi, but al-Kindi also made rich contributions to it. He also contributed to spherical geometry to assist him in astronomical studies.

In chemistry, he opposed the idea that base metals can be converted to precious metals. In contrast to prevailing alchemical views, he was emphatic that chemical reactions cannot bring about the transformation of elements. In physics, he made rich contributions to geometrical optics and wrote a book on it. This book later on provided guidance and inspiration to such eminent scientists as Roger Bacon.

In medicine, his chief contribution comprises the fact that he was the first to systematically determine the doses to be administered of all the drugs known at his time. This resolved the conflicting views prevailing among physicians on the dosage that caused difficulties in writing recipes.

Very little was known on the scientific aspects of music in his time. He pointed out that the various notes that combine to produce harmony, have a specific pitch each. Thus, notes with too low or too high a pitch are non-pleasant. The degree of harmony depends on the frequency of notes, etc. He also pointed out the fact that when a sound is produced, it generates waves in the air which strike the ear-drum. His work contains a notation on the determination of pitch.
He was a prolific writer: the total number of books written by him was 241, the prominent among which were divided as follows :
Astronomy 16, Arithmetic 11, Geometry 32, Medicine 22, Physics 12, Philosophy 22, Logic 9, Psychology 5, and Music 7.

In addition, various monographs written by him concern tides, astronomical instruments, rocks, precious stones, etc. He was also an early translator of Greek works into Arabic, but this fact has largely been over-shadowed by his numerous original writings. It is unfortunate that most of his books are no longer extant, but those existing speak very high of his standard of scholarship and contribution. He was known as Alkindus in Latin and a large number of his books were translated into Latin by Gherard of Cremona. His books that were translated into Latin during the Middle Ages comprise Risalah dar Tanjim, Ikhtiyarat al-Ayyam, Ilahyat-e-Aristu, al-Mosiqa, Mad-o-Jazr, and Adviyah Murakkaba. Al-Kindi's influence on development of science and philosophy was significant in the revival of sciences in that period. In the Middle Ages, Cardano considered him as one of the twelve greatest minds. His works, in fact, lead to further development of various subjects for centuries, notably physics, mathematics, medicine and music.

ABUL HASAN ALI AZ-MASU'DI
( DIED 957 A.D.)
Abul Hasan Ali Ibn Husain Ibn Ali AL-Masu'di was a descendant of Abdallah Ibn Masu'd, a companion of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him). An expert geographer, a physicist and historian, Masu'di was born in the last decade of the 9th century A.D., his exact date of birth being unknown. He was a Mutazilite Arab, who explored distant lands and died at Cairo, in 957 A.D.

He traveled to Fars in 915 A.D. and, after staying for one year in Istikhar, he proceeded via Baghdad to India, where he visited Multan and Mansoora before returning to Fars. From there he traveled to Kirman and then again to India. Mansoora in those days was a city of great renown and was the capital of the Muslim state of Sind. Around it, there were many settlements/townships of new converts to Islam. In 918 A.D., Masu'di traveled to Gujrat, where more than 10,000 Arab Muslims had settled in the sea-port of Chamoor. He also traveled to Deccan, Ceylon, Indo-China and China, and proceeded via Madagascar, Zanjibar and Oman to Basra.

At Basra he completed his book Muruj-al-Zahab, in which he has described in a most absorbing manner his experience of various countries, peoples and climates. He gives accounts of his personal contacts with the Jews, Iranians, Indians and Christians. From Basra he moved to Syria and from there to Cairo, where he wrote his second extensive book Muruj al-Zaman in thirty volumes. In this book he has described in detail the geography and history of the countries that he had visited. His first book was completed in 947 A.D. He also prepared a supplement, called Kitab al-Ausat, in which he has compiled historical events chronologically. In 957 A.D., the year of his death, he completed his last book Kitab al-Tanbih wa al-Ishraf, in which he has given a summary of his earlier book as well as an errata.

Masu'di is referred to as the Herodotus and Pliny of the Arabs. By presenting a critical account of historical events, he initiated a change in the art of historical writing, introducing the elements of analysis, reflection and criticism, which was later on further improved by Ibn Khaldun. In particular, in Al-Tanbeeh he makes a systematic study of history against a perspective of geography, sociology, anthropology and ecology. Masu'di had a deep insight into the causes of rise and fall of nations.

With his scientific and analytical approach he has given an account of the causes of the earthquake of 955 A.D., as well as the discussions of the water of the Red Sea and other problems in the earth sciences. He is the first author to make mention of windmills, which were invented by the Muslims of Sijistan.

Masu'di also made important contributions to music and other fields of science. In his book Muruj al-Zahab he provides important information on early Arab music as well as music of other countries.

His book Muruj al-Zahab wa al-Ma'adin al-Jawahir (Meadows of Gold and Mines of Precious Stones) has been held as 'remarkable' because of the 'catholicity of its author, who neglected no source of information and of his truly scientific curiosity'. As mentioned above, it was followed by his treatise Muruj al-Zaman. In addition to writing a supplement Kitab al-Ausat, he completed Kitab al-Tanbih wa al-Ishraf towards the end of his career. It is, however, unfortunate that, out of his 34 books as mentioned by himself in Al-Tanbih, only three have survived, in addition to Al-Tanbih itself.

Some doubts have been expressed about some claims related to his extensive traveling e.g., up to China and Madagascar, but the correct situation cannot be assessed due to the loss of his several books. Whatever he has recorded was with a scientific approach and constituted an important contribution to geography, history and earth sciences. It is interesting to note that he was one of the early scientists who propounded several aspects of evolution viz., from minerals to plant, plant to animal and animal to man. His researches and views extensively influenced the sciences of historiography, geography and earth sciences for several countries.

ABU AL-HASAN AL-MAWARDI
( 972-1058 A.D.)
Abu al-Hasan Ali Ibn Muhammad Ibn Habib al-Mawardi was born at Basrah. in 972 A.D. He was educated at first in Basrah where, after completion of his basic education, he learned Fiqah (Islamic jurisprudence) from the jurist Abu al-Wahid al-Simari. He then went to Baghdad for advanced studies under Sheikh Abd al-Hamid and Abdallah al-Baqi. His proficiency in jurisprudence Ethics, Political science and literature proved useful in securing a respectable career for him. After his initial appointment as Qazi (Judge), he was gradually promoted to higher offices, till he became the Chief Justice at Baghdad. The Abbasid Caliph al-Qaim bi Amr Allah appointed him as his roving ambassador and sent him to a number of countries as the head of special missions. In this capacity he played a key role in establishing harmonious relations between the declining Abbasid Caliphate and the rising powers of Buwahids and Seljukes. He was favored with rich gifts and tributes by most Sultans of the time. He was still in Baghdad when it was taken over by Buwahids.

AL-Mawardi died in 1058 A.D.

AL-Mawardi was a great jurist, mohaddith, sociologist and an expert in Political Science. He was a jurist in the school of Fiqah and his book Al-Havi on the principles of jurisprudence is held in high repute.

His contribution in political science and sociology comprises a number of monumental books, the most famous of which are Kitab al-Ahkam al-Sultania, Qanun al-Wazarah, and Kitab Nasihat al-Mulk. The books discuss the principles of political science, with special reference to the functions and duties of the caliphs, the chief minister, other ministers, relationships between various elements of public and government and measures to strengthen the government and ensure victory in war. Two of these books, al-Ahkam al-Sultania and Qanun al-Wazarah have been published and also translated into various languages. He is considered as being the author/supporter of the 'Doctrine of ' Necessity' in political science. He was thus in favor of a strong caliphate and discouraged unlimited powers delegated to the Governors, which tended to create chaos. On the other hand, he has laid down clear principles for election of the caliph and qualities of the voters, chief among which are attainment of a degree of intellectual level and purity of character.

In ethics, he wrote Kitab Aadab al-Dunya wa al-Din, which became a widely popular book on the subject and is still read in some Islamic countries.

Al-Mawardi has been considered as one of the most famous thinkers in political science in the middle ages. His original work influenced the development of this science, together with the science of sociology, which was further developed later on by Ibn Khaldun.

MOHAMMAD IBN ZAKARIYA AL-RAZI
( 864 - 930 A.D.)
Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi (864-930 A.D.) was born at Ray, Iran, Initially, he was interested in music but later on he learnt medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry and philosophy from a student of Hunayn Ibn Ishaq, who was well versed in the ancient Greek, Persian and Indian systems of medicine and other subjects. He also studied under Ali Ibn Rabban. The practical experience gained at the well-known Muqtadari Hospital helped him in his chosen profession of medicine. At an early age he gained eminence as an expert in medicine and alchemy, so that patients and students flocked to him from distant parts of Asia.

He was first placed in-charge of the first Royal Hospital at Ray, from where he soon moved to a similar position in Baghdad where he remained the head of its famous Muqtadari Hospital for a long time. He moved from time to time to various cities, specially between Ray and Baghdad, but finally returned to Ray, where he died around 930 A.D. His name is commemorated in the Razi Institute near Tehran.

Razi was a Hakim; an alchemist and a philosopher. In medicine, his 'contribution was so significant that it can only be compared to that of Ibn Sina. Some of his works in medicine e.g. Kitab al-Mansoori, Al-Havi, Kitab al-Mulooki and Kitab al-Judari wa al-Hasabah earned everlasting fame. Kitab al-Mansoori, which was translated into Latin in the l5th century A.D., comprised ten volumes and dealt exhaustively with Greco-Arab medicine. Some of its volumes were published separately in Europe. His al-Judari wal Hasabah was the first treatise on smallpox and chicken-pox, and is largely based on Razi's original contribution. It was translated into various European languages. Through this treatise he became the first to draw clear comparisons between smallpox and chicken-pox. Al-Havi was the largest medical encyclopedia composed by then. It contained on each medical subject all important information that was available from Greek and Arab sources, and this was concluded by him by giving his own remarks based on his experience and views. A special feature of his medical system was that he greatly favored cure through correct and regulated food. This was combined with his emphasis on the influence of psychological factors on health. He also tried proposed remedies first on animals in order to evaluate in their effects and side effects. He was also an expert surgeon and was the first to use opium for anesthesia.

In addition to being a physician, he compounded medicines and, in his later years, gave himself over to experimental and theoretical sciences. It seems possible that he developed his chemistry independently of Jabir Ibn Hayyan. He has portrayed in great detail several chemical reactions and also given full descriptions of and designs f or about twenty instruments used in chemical investigations. His description of chemical knowledge is in plain and plausible language. One of his books called Kitab-al-Asrar deals with the preparation of chemical materials and their utilization. Another one was translated into Latin under the name Liber Experimentorum, He went beyond his predecessors in dividing substances into plants, animals and minerals, thus in a way opening the way for inorganic and organic chemistry. By and large, this classification of the three kingdoms still holds. As a chemist, he was the first to produce sulfuric acid together with some other acids, and he also prepared alcohol by fermenting sweet products.

His contribution as a philosopher is also well known. The basic elements in his philosophical system are the creator, spirit, matter, space and time. He discusses their characteristics in detail and his concepts of space and time as constituting a continuum are outstanding. His philosophical views were, however, criticized by a number of other Muslim scholars of the era.
He was a prolific author, who has left monumental treatises on numerous subjects. He has more than 200 outstanding scientific contributions to his credit, out of which about half deal with medicine and 21 concern alchemy. He also wrote on physics, mathematics, astronomy and optics, but these writings could not be preserved. A number of his books, including Jami-fi-al-Tib, Mansoori, al-Havi, Kitab al-Jadari wa at-Hasabah, al-Malooki, Maqalah fi al-Hasat fi Kuli wa al-Mathana, Kitab al-Qalb, Kitab al-Mafasil, Kitab-al-'Ilaj al-Ghoraba , Bar al-Sa'ah, and al-Taqseem wa al-Takhsir, have been published in various European languages. About 40 of his manuscripts are still extant in the museums and libraries of Iran, Paris, Britain, Rampur, and Bankipur. His contribution has greatly influenced the development of science, in general, and medicine, in particular.

JALAL AL-DIN RUMI
( 1207-1273 A.D.)
Jalal al-Din Mohammad Ibn Mohammad Ibn Mohammad Ibn Husain al-Rumi was born in 604 A.H. (1207/8 A.D.) at Balkh (now Afghanistan). His father Baha al-Din was a renowned religious scholar. Under his patronage, Rumi received his early education from Syed Burhan-al-Din. When his age was about 18 years, the family ( after several migrations) finally settled at Konya and at the age of 25, Rumi was sent to Aleppo for advanced education and later to Damascus. Rumi continued with his education till he was 40 years old, although on his father's death Rumi succeeded him as a professor in the famous Madrasah at Konya at the age of about 24 years. He received his mystical training first at the hands of Syed Burhan al-Din and later he was trained by Shams al-Din Tabriz. He became famous for his mystical insight, his religious knowledge and as a Persian poet. He used to teach a large number of pupils at his Madrasah and also founded the famous Maulvi Order in Tasawwuf. He died in 672 A.H. (1273 A.D.) at Konya, which subsequently became a sacred place for dancing dervishes of the Maulvi Order.

His major contribution lies in Islamic philosophy and Tasawwuff. This was embodied largely in poetry, especially through his famous Mathnavi. This book, the largest mystical exposition in verse, discusses and offers solutions to many complicated problems in metaphysics, religion, ethics, mysticism, etc. Fundamentally, the Mathnavi highlights the various hidden aspects of Sufism and their relationship with the worldly life. For this, Rumi draws on a variety of subjects and derives numerous examples from everyday life. His main subject is the relationship between man and God on the one hand, and between man and man, on the other. He apparently believed in Pantheism and portrayed the various stages of man's evolution in his journey towards the Ultimate.

Apart from the Mathnavi, he also wrote his Divan (collection of poems) and Fihi-Ma-Fih (a collection of mystical sayings). However, it is the Mathnavi itself that has largely transmitted Rumi's message. Soon after its completion, other scholars started writing detailed commentaries on it, in order to interpret its rich propositions on Tasawwuff, Metaphysics and Ethics. Several commentaries in different languages have been written since then.

His impact on philosophy, literature, mysticism and culture, has been so deep throughout Central Asia and most Islamic countries that almost all religious scholars, mystics, philosophers, sociologists and others have referred to his verses during all these centuries. since his death. Most difficult problems in these areas seem to get simplified in the light of his references. His message seems to have inspired most of the intellectuals in Central Asia and adjoining areas since his time, and scholars like Iqbal have further developed Rumi's concepts. The Mathnavi became known as the interpretation of the Qur'an in the Pahlavi language. He is one of the few intellectuals and mystics whose views have so profoundly affected the world-view in its higher perspective in large parts of the Islamic World.

ALI IBN RABBAN AL-TABARI
( 838 - 870 A.D.)
This accomplished Hakim was the tutor of the unparalleled physician Zakariya al-Razi. Luck favored the disciple more than the teacher in terms of celebrity. As compared to Razi people know very little about his teacher Ali.

Ali Bin Rabban's surname was Abu al-Hasan, the full name being Abu al-Hasan Ali Bin Sahl Rabban al-Tabari. Born in 838 A.D. his father Sahl hailed from a respectable Jew family. The nobility and sympathy inherent in his very nature soon endeared him to his countrymen so much so that they used to call him Rabban which implies "my leader".

Professionally Sahl was an extremely successful physician. He had command over the art of calligraphy too. Besides he had a deep insight into the disciplines of Astronomy, Philosophy, Mathematics and Literature. Some complicated articles of Batlemus's book al-Mijasti came to be resolved by way of Sahl's scholarly expertise, translators preceding him had failed to solve the mystery.

Ali received his education in the disciplines of Medical science and calligraphy from his able father Sahl and attained perfection in these fields. He had also mastered Syriac and Greek languages to a high degree of proficiency.

Ali hailed from a Israelite family. Since he had embraced Islam, he is classified amongst Muslim Scholars. This family belonged to Tabristan's famous city Marv.

The fame acquired by Ali Bin Rabban did not simply account for the reason that a physician of the stature of Zakariya al-Razi was amongst his disciple. In fact the main cause behind his exaltation lies in his world-renowned treatise Firdous al-Hikmat.

Spread over seven parts, Firdous al-Hikmat is the first ever Medical encyclopedia which incorporates all the branches of medical science in its folds. This work has been published in this century (20th century) only. Prior to this publication only five of his manuscripts were to be found scattered in libraries the world over. Dr. Mohammed Zubair Siddiqui compared and edited the manuscripts. In his preface he has provided extremely useful information regarding the book and the author and, wherever felt necessary, explanatory notes have been written to facilitate publication of this work on modern publishing standards.

Later on this unique work was published with the cooperation of English and German institutions. Following are the details of its all seven parts:

1. Part one: Kulliyat-e-Tibb. This part throws light on contemporary ideology of medical science. In that era these principles formed the basis of medical science.
2. Part two: Elucidation of the organs of the human body, rules for keeping good health and comprehensive account of certain muscular diseases.
3. Part three: Description of diet to be taken in conditions of health and disease.
4. Part four: All diseases right from head to toe. This part is of profound significance in the whole book and comprises twelve papers:
i) General causes relating to eruption of diseases. ii) Diseases of the head and the brain. iii) Diseases relating to the eye, nose, ear, mouth and the teeth. iv) Muscular diseases (paralysis and spasm). v) Diseases of the regions of the chest, throat and the lungs. vi) Diseases of the abdomen. vii) Diseases of the liver. viii) Diseases of gallbladder and, spleen. ix) Intestinal diseases. x) Different kinds of fever. xi) Miscellaneous diseases -- Brief explanation of organs of the body. xii) Examination of pulse and urine. This part is the largest in the book and is almost half the size of the whole book.
5. Part five: Description of flavor, taste and color.
6. Part six: Drugs and poison.
7. Part seven: Deals with diverse topics. Discusses climate and astronomy. Also contains a brief mention of Indian medicine.

Though he wrote Firdous al-Hikmat in Arabic but he simultaneously translated it into Syriac. He has two more compilations to his credit namely Deen-o-Doulat and Hifz al-Sehhat . The latter is available in manuscript-form in the library of Oxford University. Besides Medical science, he was also a master of Philosophy, Mathematics and Astronomy. He breathed his last around 870 A.D.

THABIT IBN QURRA
( 836 - 901 A.D. )
Thabit Ibn Qurra Ibn Marwan al-Sabi al-Harrani was born in the year 836 A.D. at Harran (present Turkey). As the name indicates he was basically a member of the Sabian sect, but the great Muslim mathematician Muhammad Ibn Musa Ibn Shakir, impressed by his knowledge of languages, and realizing his potential for a scientific career, selected him to join the scientific group at Baghdad that was being patronized by the Abbasid Caliphs. There, he studied under the famous Banu Musa brothers. It was in this 'setting that Thabit contributed to several branches of science, notably mathematics, astronomy and mechanics, in addition to translating a large number of works from Greek to Arabic. Later, he was patronized by the Abbasid Caliph al-M'utadid. After a long career of scholarship, Thabit died at Baghdad in 901 A.D.

Thabit's major contribution lies in mathematics and astronomy. He was instrumental in extending the concept of traditional geometry to geometrical algebra and proposed several theories that led to the development of non-Euclidean geometry, spherical trigonometry, integral calculus and real numbers. He criticized a number of theorems of Euclid's elements and proposed important improvements. He applied arithmetical terminology to geometrical quantities, and studied several aspects of conic sections, notably those of parabola and ellipse. A number of his computations aimed at determining the surfaces and volumes of different types of bodies and constitute, in fact, the processes of integral calculus, as developed later.

In astronomy he was one of the early reformers of Ptolemic views. He analyzed several problems related to the movements of sun and moon and wrote treatises on sun-dials.
In the fields of mechanics and physics he may be recognized as the founder of statics. He examined conditions of equilibrium of bodies, beams and levers.

In addition to translating a large number of books himself, he founded a school of translation and supervised the translation of a further large number of books from Greek to Arabic.

Among Thabit's writings a large number have survived, while several are not extant. Most of the books are on mathematics, followed by astronomy and medicine. The books have been written in Arabic but some are in Syriac. In the Middle Ages, some of his books were translated into Latin by Gherard of Cremona. In recent centuries, a number of his books have been translated into European languages and published.

He carried further the work of the Banu Musa brothers and later his son and grandson continued in this tradition, together with the other members of the group. His original books as well as his translations accomplished in the 9th century exerted a positive influence on the development of subsequent scientific research.

NASIR AL-DIN AL-TUSI
( 1201 - 1274 A.D.)
Abu Jafar Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn al-Hasan Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was born in Tus, Khurasan, (now Iran) in 1201 A.D. Al-Tusi was appointed astrologer for the State by Isma'ili governor Nasir ad-Din 'Abd ar-Rahim. He learnt sciences and philosophy from Kamal al-Din Ibn Yunus, Shaikh al-Mufid, and the two brothers, members of Ahl al-bait and both outstanding scholars, al-Sharif al-Murtada and al-Sharif al-Radi.

He was instrumental in the establishment an observatory at Maragha. t became operational in 1262 and housed many scientific instruments used for astronomy, designed by al-Tusi. Al-Tusi wrote many books, some of which are improved translations of Euclid, Ptolemy, Theodosius and Apollonius. However in his Memorandum on Astronomy he criticises Ptolemy's theories.

He also made important original contributions to astronomy and mathematics. One of his most important mathematical contributions was the creation of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right rather than as just a tool for astronomical applications. Another mathematical contribution was his teaching about Pascal's triangle relating binomial coefficients, long before the time of Pascal.

Al-Tusi put his observatory to good use, making a very accurate table of planetary movements. He published Ilkhanic Tables after making observations for 12 years. These contain tables for computing the positions of the planets. They also contain a star catalogue.

Al-Tusi calculated the value of 51' for the precession of the equinoxes. He also wrote works on instruments, for example on constructing and using an astrolabe.

He had a number of pupils, one of the better known being Nizam al-a'Raj who wrote a commentary on the Almagest. Another of his pupils Qutb ad-Din ash-Shirazi gave the first satisfactory mathematical explanation of the rainbow.

Nasir al-Din was one of the greatest scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, theologians and physicians of the time and was a prolific writer. He made significant contributions to a large number of subjects, and it is indeed difficult to present his work in a few words. He wrote one or several treatises on different sciences and subjects including those on geometry, algebra, arithmetic, trigonometry, medicine, metaphysics, logic, ethics and theology. In addition he wrote poetry in Persian.

In mathematics, his major contribution would seem to be in trigonometry, which was compiled by him as a new subject in its own right for the first time. Also he developed the subject of spherical trigonometry, including six fundamental formulas for the solution of spherical right-angled triangles.

As the chief scientist at the observatory established under his supervision at Maragha, he made significant contributions to astronomy. The observatory was equipped with the best possible instruments, including those collected by the Mongol armies from Baghdad and other Islamic centers. The instruments included astrolabes, representations of constellations, epicycles, shapes of spheres, etc. He himself invented an instrument 'turquet' that contained two planes. After the devoted work of 12 years at the observatory and with the assistance of his group, he produced new astronomical tables called 'Al-Zij-Ilkhani' dedicated to Ilkhan (Halagu Khan).

Although Tusi had contemplated completing the tables in 30 years, the time required for the completion of planetary cycles, but he had to complete them in 12 years on orders from Halagu Khan. The tables were largely based on original observations, but also drew upon the then existing knowledge on the subject. The 'Zij Ilkhani' became the most popular tables among astronomers and remained so till the 15th century. Nasir al-Din pointed out several serious shortcomings in Ptolemy's astronomy and foreshadowed the later dissatisfaction with the system that culminated in the Copernican reforms.

In philosophy, apart from his contribution in logic and metaphysics , his work on ethics entitled Akhlaq-i-Nasri became the most important book on the subject, and remained popular for centuries. His book Tajrid-al-'Aqaid was a major work on al-Kalam (Islamic Scholastic Philosophy) and enjoyed widespread popularity. Several commentaries were written on this book and even a number of supercommentaries on the major commentaries, Sharh Qadim and Sharh Jadid.

The list of his known treatises is exhaustive; Brockelmann lists 56 and Sarton 64. About one-fourth of these concern mathematics, another fourth astronomy, another fourth philosophy and religion, and the remainder other subjects. The books, though originally written in Arabic and Persian, were translated into Latin and other European languages in the Middle Ages and several of these have been printed.

Tusi's influence has been significant in the development of science, notably in mathematics and astronomy. His books were widely consulted for centuries and he has been held in high repute for his rich contributions.

ABU AL-QASIM AL-ZAHRAVI
( 936 - 1013 A.D.)
Abul Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas al-Zahravi (known in the west as Abulcasis) was born in 936 A.D. in Zahra in the neighborhood of Cordova. He became one of the most renowned surgeons of the Muslim era and was physician to King Al-Hakam-II of Spain. After a long medical career, rich with significant original contribution, he died in 1013 A.D.

He is best known for his early and original breakthroughs in surgery as well as for his famous Medical Encyclopedia called Al-Tasrif, which is composed of thirty volumes covering different aspects of medical science. The more important part of this series comprises three books on surgery, which describe in detail various aspects of surgical treatment as based on the operations performed by him, including cauterization, removal of stone from the bladder, dissection of animals, midwifery, stypics, and surgery of eye, ear and throat. He perfected several delicate operations, including removal of the dead foetus and amputation.

Al-Tasrif was first translated by Gherard of Cremona into Latin in the Middle Ages. It was followed by several other editors in Europe. The book contains numerous diagrams and illustrations of surgical instruments, in use or developed by him, and comprised a part of the medical curriculum in European countries for many centuries. Contrary to the view that the Muslims fought shy of surgery, Al-Zahravi's Al-Tasrif provided a monumental collection for this branch of applied science.

Al-Zahravi was the inventor of several surgical instruments, of which three are notable: (i) an instrument for internal examination of the ear, (ii) an instrument for internal inspection of the urethra, and (iii) and instrument for applying or removing foreign bodies from the throat. He specialized in curing disease by cauterization and applied the technique to as many as 50 different operations.

In his book Al-Tasrif, Al-Zahravi has also discussed the preparation of various medicines, in addition to a comprehensive account of surgical treatment in specialized branches, whose modern counterparts are E.N.T., Ophthalmology, etc. In connection with the preparation of medicines, he has also described in detail the application of such techniques as sublimation and decantation. Al-Zahravi was also an expert in dentistry, and his book contains sketches of various instruments used thereof, in addition to a description of various important dental operations. He discussed the problem of non-aligned or deformed teeth and how to rectify these defects. He developed the technique of preparing artificial teeth and of replacement of defective teeth by these. In medicine, he was the first to describe in detail the unusual disease, hemophilia.

There can be no doubt that Al-Zahravi influenced the field of medicine and surgery very deeply and the principles laid down by him were recognized as authentic in medical science, especially surgery, and these continued to influence the medical world for five centuries. According to Dr. Cambell ( History of Arab Medicine), his principles of medical science surpassed those of Galen in the European medical curriculum.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

209)Canadian views on God, creationism and evolution.

2007-07-04T08:34:00.000-05:00

Quote:
The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought. Outside His will, outside His thought, all is nothing, even the things which seem to us absolutely self-evident such as space and time. Allah alone wishes: the Universe exists; and all manifestations are as a witness of the Divine will (Memoirs of Aga Khan III, 1954).

Most see God-creation link: Poll

Jul 03, 2007 01:58 PM Canadian Press
Toronto Star

OTTAWA — Canadians may not be as religious as Americans, but a new poll suggests they are not prepared to rule out God’s essential role in creation.

The Canadian Press-Decima Research survey suggests that 60 per cent of Canadians believe God had either a direct or indirect role in creating mankind, shattering the myth that Canadians had long ago put their faith strictly behind the scientific explanation for creation.

The poll suggests Canadians divide in essentially three groups on the issue of creation: 34 per cent of those polled said humans developed over millions of years under a process guided by God; 26 per cent said God created humans alone within the last 10,000 years or so; and 29 per cent said they believe evolution occurred with no help from God.

“These results reflect an essential Canadian tendency,” said pollster Bruce Anderson. “We are pretty secular, but pretty hesitant to embrace atheism.”

The belief that God had a direct or indirect role in creation was widespread among the 1,000 respondents questioned between June 21 and 24. A majority of those polled held this view in every region of the country, in rural and urban areas, and regardless of education.

And there were a few surprises: Conservatives were more likely than Liberals to say that God had no part in the process, and Alberta, regarded as the birthplace of social conservatism, had one of the lowest levels of beliefs for strict creationism at 22 per cent.

But in this controversial area, the devil is in the breakdown of the numbers.

For instance, while Liberal party voters were more likely than Conservatives to credit God with some contribution to creation, Conservative voters were less likely to write God out altogether. Only 22 per cent of Tory respondents said God had no role, as opposed to 31 per cent of Liberals.

Liberal respondents were far more likely to be what could be termed “soft evolutionists” or “soft creationists,” with 41 per cent saying God guided the process of human development, as opposed to 34 per cent of Conservatives seeing creation in those terms.

Regionally, Quebec respondents were by far the most likely to say God’s role in creation was a delusion, with 40 per cent saying the evolutionary process had no interference from an intelligent designer.

British Columbia respondents were the next sub-group who could be termed strict evolutionists, with 31 per cent saying God was not involved. Least likely to hold this view were respondents in the Prairie provinces — 21 per cent.

The findings suggest the least educated were most likely to be creationists, as were respondents living in rural Canada.

Among respondents without a high-school diploma, 37 per cent said they believed God alone created humans less than 10,000 years ago, whereas only 15 per cent of university-educated respondents were strict creationists.

Rural respondents also had a plurality who believed in strict creationism at 34 per cent, whereas only 22 per cent of urban dwellers said they believed God alone created humans.

Anderson said the findings suggest Canadians lack consensus on creation, but also don’t view the issue as polarizing.

“It’s more as though for many, these feelings are unresolved,” he said. “We believe in a higher being, we know what we don’t know, are comfortable not knowing, and choose not to press our views upon one another.”

That is not the case in the United States, where similar polls have suggested Americans are more polarized on the subject. In a recent U.S. poll, 45 per cent said God created humans, and 40 per cent said evolution was God guided. Only 15 per cent said God played no part in creation.

The Canadian Press-Decima Research survey is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

208)Selected speech excerpts of Aga Khan IV, from 1963 to 2004, relating to the subjects of knowledge, intellect, science and religion.

2007-07-02T16:42:00.000-05:00

The following speech excerpts, taken from speeches made by Mowlana Hazar Imam between 1963 and 2004, were chosen by me for this post because I feel that they are relevant to the title of my blogsite. However, to appreciate the full essence of the speech, I would advise you to read each speech in its entirety as it appears on the Institute of Ismaili Studies website:

http://www.iis.ac.uk/view_article.asp?ContentID=104623

This blogpost has also been cross-posted onto the Ismaili Mail website by its publisher:

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/selected-speech-excerpts-of-aga-khan-iv-from-1963-to-2004-relating-to-the-subjects-of-knowledge-intellect-science-and-religion/

Presidential Address at the First Anniversary of Mindanao University
His Highness the Aga Khan
November 24, 1963
Manilla, Philippines:

The Universities in Damascus and Baghdad, and later those of Cairo, Tehran, Cordova and Istanbul were centres of learning unparalleled anywhere else. Even in those days, once the brute force of the armies had been withdrawn it was the power of the intellectual elite which took over and governed, ran and maintained the State.

During the two Caliphates, the Muslim Universities were producing the best scholars, doctors, astronomers and philosophers. Today where are we? Have we institutions of learning which can compare with the Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, M.I.T.?

God has given us the miracle of life with all its attributes: the extraordinary manifestations of sunrise and sunset, of sickness and recovery, of birth and death, but surely if He has given us the means with which to remove ourselves from this world so as to go to other parts of the Universe, we can but accept as further manifestations the creation and destructions of stars, the birth and death of atomic particles, the flighting new sound and light waves. I am afraid that the torch of intellectual discovery, the attraction of the unknown, the desire for intellectual self-perfection have left us. I fully realise that one needs today tools with which to extend the realms of man's knowledge, and that generally speaking these tools are the possessions of the more advanced essentially Christian parts of the world.

Convocation Address at Peshawar University
An Address at the Platinum Jubilee Ceremony
His Highness the Aga Khan
November 30, 1967
Peshawar, Pakistan

....this University is situated in one of the most historically awesome sites on earth. Speaking to you today, I cannot fail to recollect the names of people, places, and civilisations which light the glittering past of this region. Peshawar is not only the gateway of Central Asia, but much more it is a jewel box of history. The walls are nature's mountainous fortifications and the key is the Khyber Pass. Inside are the names of many of history's most precious jewels: Gandhara, the Greeks, the Buddhists, the Huns, the Brahmins, the Ghaznavids, the Mughals, the Sikhs, the Afghans, the Iranis, the Uzbeks, the Tajeks, the Afridis, the Aryans, Alexander the Great, Darius, Genghis Khan, the Sassanians, Kandahar and many more. Few cities of learning can boast such a variegated and colourful past.

Convocation Address at the University of Sind
His Highness the Aga Khan
February 6, 1970
Hyderabad, Pakistan

Let me turn to another aspect of Islamic society: our intellectual elite. In the past, much of the dynamism of Muslim society was born from the leaders of the faith: the Imams, the Pirs and Mullahs. This identity between the leaders of the faith and the empire's intellectual elite was a continuous source of strength both to the faith and those whose duty it was to govern the empire. How many aspiring Mullahs or Imams today enter secular universities and obtain degrees in secular subjects? And vice-versa, how many university graduates, after completing their degrees, turn their lives to directing the flock of the faithful? Let me not be misunderstood - I criticise neither Pirs nor Mullahs nor Imams nor degree-holders. I simply state that in future I believe it will be in our society's interest to have a much wider platform in common between our religious and our secular leaders. Our religious leadership must be acutely aware of secular trends, including those generated by this age of science and technology. Equally, our academic or secular elite must be deeply aware of Muslim history, of the scale and depth of leadership exercised by the Islamic empire of the past in all fields.

It is through the creation of such a new elite, inspired by, and widely read in everything related to our heritage, that there must come about a revival in Muslim thought. The whole approach to education, without becoming archaic, should begin now to re-introduce, as widely as possible, the work and thought of our great Muslim writers and philosophers. Thus, from the nursery school to the university, the thoughts of the young will be inspired by our own heritage and not that of some foreign culture. Again, let there be no misunderstanding: I am not in any way opposed to the literature or the art or the thought of the West. I simply maintain that the Islamic heritage is just as great and that it is up to us to bring it to the forefront again. When our nursery school children first begin to read, why should they not let their imaginations build upon the prowess of the Great Khaled rather than Wellington or Napoleon? And if the student of philosophy seeks a degree, should he not be encouraged to read about even Al-Hallaj rather than Hegel or Kierkegaard?

Commencement Speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
His Highness the Aga Khan
May 27, 1994
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

Education has been important to my family for a long time. My forefathers founded al-Azhar University in Cairo some 1000 years ago, at the time of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. Discovery of knowledge was seen by those founders as an embodiment of religious faith, and faith as reinforced by knowledge of workings of the Creator's physical world. The form of universities has changed over those 1000 years, but that reciprocity between faith and knowledge remains a source of strength.

In conclusion, I would recall the words of former MIT President James Killian Jr Nearly fifty years ago, he said: "We need better linkages between science and the humanities, with the object of fusing the two into a broad humanism that rests upon both science and the liberal arts and that does not weaken either. We need bifocal vision to thread our way among the problems of modern society." That need to use the power of complementary academic disciplines remains true today.

Baccalaureate Address at Brown University
His Highness the Aga Khan
May 26, 1996
Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Having said this, the means at your disposal to achieve such an impact have multiplied exponentially during the last decade. Never before has their been so much knowledge available about so many different people; never before have we known more about the physical world in which we live; never before therefore have the opportunities been greater to make a better life for more people around the globe.

Against this worrying global background it must be made utterly clear that in so far as Islam is concerned, this violence is not a function of the faith itself, as much as the media would have you believe. This is a misperception which has become rampant, but which should not be endowed with any validity, nor should it be accepted and given credibility. It is wrong and damaging. The myth that Islam is responsible for all the wrong doing of certain Muslims may well stem from the truism that for all Muslims, the concepts of Din and Duniya, Faith and World, are inextricably linked. More so than in any other monotheistic religion of the world. The corollary is that in a perfect world, all political and social action on the part of Muslims would always be pursued within the ethical framework of the faith. But this is not yet a perfect world. The West, nonetheless, must no longer confuse the link in Islam, between spiritual and temporal, with that between state and church.

With the deaths of King Charles the First, and Louis the Sixteenth, Western culture initiated a process of secularisation which grew into present day democratic institutions, and lay cultures. Islam, on the other hand, never endorsed any political dogma. So the historical process of secularisation which occurred in the West, never took place in Muslim societies. What we are witnessing today, in certain Islamic countries, is exactly the opposite evolution, the theocratisation of the political process. There is no unanimity in the Islamic world on the desirability of this trend but it would certainly be less threatening if the humanistic ethics of the faith were the driving force behind the processes of change.

The Muslim world, once a remarkable bastion of scientific and humanist knowledge, a rich and self-confident cradle of culture and art, has never forgotten its past. The abyss between this memory and the towering problems of tomorrow would, cause disorientation even to the most secure societies .

Yet many other problems facing the Muslim world now, have existed for centuries. From the seventh century to the thirteenth century, the Muslim civilizations dominated world culture, accepting, adopting, using and preserving all preceding study of mathematics, philosophy, medicine and astronomy, among other areas of learning. The Islamic field of thought and knowledge included and added to much of the information on which all civilisations are founded. And yet this fact is seldom acknowledged today, be it in the West or in the Muslim world, and this amnesia has left a six hundred year gap in the history of human thought.

It was during the 15th century that Muslim civilisation began a period of decline, losing ground to European economic, intellectual and cultural hegemony. Islamic culture began to be marginalised, and worse yet, its horizons narrowed until it lost its self-respect, and pursued no further the cultural and intellectual search on which it was embarked. Even as Muslim learning was studied in the greatest universities in Europe, La Sorbonne, Oxford, Bologna, it was being forgotten in all Muslim societies from the fourteenth century on. Little of what was discovered and written by Muslim thinkers during the classical period is taught in any educational institution, and when it is, due credit is not given.

The great Muslim philosopher al-Kindi wrote eleven hundred years ago, "No one is diminished by the truth, rather does the truth ennobles all". That is no less true today.

We have much to build with. A common Abrahamic, monotheistic tradition. Common ethical principles, founded on shared human values. Common problems of yesterday, resolved together. Common challenges of tomorrow, that we can best face together. These, and all that much more that I cannot enumerate, but are fact, are the materials with which to build a bridge. Enlightened by sound intellect, I see its structure strongly built from the realities of our world. But any structure requires bonding, and of all the bonds that can link societies, America epitomises the strongest. It is called hope. The right to hope is the most powerful human motivation I know. Its importance has been paramount in the history of this nation. It is a reasonable expectation that the next generation will be better equipped to address the challenges of life than the present one. How beautiful that bridge of hope would be between the West and the Islamic world.

'Word of God, Art of Man: The Qur'an and its Creative Expressions'
An International Colloquium organised by
The Institute of Ismaili Studies

His Highness the Aga Khan
The Ismaili Centre, London, U.K.
October 19, 2003

This is a part of its ongoing ambitious programme of Qur'anic studies in which scholars from around the world, both Muslim and of other persuasions, are participating. They bring to bear a variety of academic disciplines on a reflection of how Islam's revelation, with its challenge to man's innate gift of quest and reason, became a powerful impetus for a new flowering of human civilisation.

This programme is also an opportunity for achieving insights into how the discourse of the Qur'an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations. This freedom of interpretation is a generosity which the Qur'an confers upon all believers, uniting them in the conviction that All-Merciful Allah will forgive them if they err in their sincere attempts to understand His word. Happily, as a result, the Holy Book continues to guide and illuminate the thought and conduct of Muslims belonging to different communities of interpretation and spiritual affiliation, from century to century, in diverse cultural environments. The Noble Qur'an extends its principle of pluralism also to adherents of other faiths. It affirms that each has a direction and path to which they turn so that all should strive for good works, in the belief that, wheresoever they may be, Allah will bring them together.

The Qur'an itself acknowledges that people upon whom wisdom has been bestowed are the recipients of abundant good; they are the exalted ones. Hence Islam's consistent encouragement to Muslim men and women to seek knowledge wherever it is to be found. We are all familiar that al-Kindi, even in the 9th century, saw no shame in acknowledging and assimilating the truth, whatever its source. He argued that truth never abases, but only ennobles its seeker. Poetising the Prophet's teaching, Nasir Khusraw, the 11th century Iranian poet-philosopher, also extols the virtue of knowledge. For him, true jihad is the war that must be waged against the perpetrators of bigotry, through spreading knowledge that dispels the darkness of ignorance and nourishes the seed of peace that is innately embedded in the human soul.

This colloquium covers a range of Muslim expressions in the Arts, across time and space. Some among the eminent scholars present today have observed that, while the Qur'an may not propound a doctrine of Islamic art or material culture, it does offer imaginative scope in this direction. From early on, its passages have inspired works of art and architecture, and shaped attitudes and norms that have guided the development of Muslim artistic traditions.

In this context, would it not also be relevant to consider how, above all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe as an expression of Allah's will and creation that has inspired, in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah'.

Does not the Qur'an challenge the artist, as much as the mystic, to go beyond the physical - the outward - so as to seek to unveil that which lies at the centre but gives life to the periphery? Is not a great work of art, like the ecstasy of the mystic, a gesture of the spirit, a stirring of the soul that comes from the attempt to experience a glimpse of, and an intimacy with, that which is ineffable and beyond being?

The famous verse of 'light' in the Qur'an, the Ayat al-Nur, whose first line is rendered here in the mural behind me, inspires among Muslims a reflection on the sacred, the transcendent. It hints at a cosmos full of signs and symbols that evoke the perfection of Allah's creation and mercy. Many other verses of the Qur'an have similarly inspired calligraphy in all its forms, reminding us of the richness and vitality of Muslim traditions in the Arts.

The Qur'an addresses this challenge eloquently. The power of its message is reflected in its gracious disposition to differences of interpretation; its respect for other faiths and societies; its affirmation of the primacy of the intellect; its insistence that knowledge is worthy when it is used to serve Allah's creation; and, above all, its emphasis on our common humanity.

Address at the 25th Anniversary Graduation Ceremony of The Institute of Ismaili Studies

His Highness the Aga Khan
Le Meridien Grosvenor House Hotel
London, U.K.
October 19, 2003

The Muslim world today is heir to a faith and a culture that stands among the leading civilisations in the world. The revelation granted to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) opened new horizons and released new energies of mind and spirit. It became the binding force that held the Muslims together despite the far-flung lands in which they lived, the diverse languages and dialects they spoke, and the multitude of traditions – scientific, artistic, religious and cultural – which went into the making of a distinctive ethos. This message is still potent in the Muslim world today, although it is sometimes clouded, distorted and deformed by political interests and by struggles for power over the minds and hearts of people. There are attempts at transforming what are meant to be fluid, progressive, open-ended, intellectually informed, and spiritually inspired traditions of thought, into hardened, monolithic, absolutist and obscurantist positions. Yet there are many across the length and breadth of the Muslim world today who care for their history and heritage, who are keenly sensitive to the radically altered conditions of the modern world. They are convinced that the idea that there is some inherent, permanent division between their heritage and the world of today is a profoundly mistaken idea; and that the choice it suggests between an Islamic identity on the one hand and on the other hand, full participation in the global order of today is a false choice indeed. They seek for ways in which their societies may benefit from the intellectual and material fruits of modernity, while remaining true to their distinctive moral, spiritual and cultural heritage.

Several days ago, at a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia, it was pointed out that the only way the umma can work its way out of its present sad state is to harness the intellect. I deeply share this conviction, but three immediate questions follow: How do we foster intellectual development in the umma? In what areas of human knowledge should we seek to lead? And where should we source our education?

Speech at the Foundation Ceremony of the Aga Khan Academy, Maputo
His Highness the Aga Khan
Matola, Mozambique
June 25th 2004

A thousand years ago, my forefathers, the Fatimid imam-caliphs of Egypt, founded al-Azhar University and the Academy of Knowledge in Cairo. In the Islamic tradition, they viewed the discovery of knowledge as a way to understand, so as to serve better God's creation, to apply knowledge and reason to build society and shape human aspirations.

The Academies are, therefore, a continuing articulation of this vision, a statement of great hope in the power of good education, and an investment in the development of the best minds who will enable future generations to take charge of their own destinies.

The above speech excerpts should all be seen as a continuation of these posts made earlier by me:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/129quotes-of-aga-khan-4-consolidated.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/02/133timeless-sayings-of-aga-khan-iii.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/145audio-speech-as-well-as-timeless.html

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2006/12/sequential-rational-intellect-of-mind.html

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

207)Updated index of my blogsite to the beginning of July 2007.

2007-07-02T16:12:00.000-05:00

Posts relating to religious doctrine: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 20, 22, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 86, 95, 98, 100, 103, 106, 112, 114, 129, 133, 135, 136, 145, 163, 180, 184, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 200, 204, 205, 208, 213.

Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202, 212, 214.

Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210.

Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174, 211, 215, 216.

Special collections of posts:

A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127.

B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202.

C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192, 210.

D)Posts relating to my China Series: 171, 172, 174.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

206)Updated index of my blogsite to the end of June 2007.

2007-06-29T19:29:00.000-05:00

Posts relating to religious doctrine: 1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 20, 22, 27, 33, 34, 35, 46, 48, 49, 50, 59, 60, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 82, 86, 95, 98, 100, 103, 106, 112, 114, 129, 133, 135, 136, 145, 163, 180, 184, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 200, 204, 205.

Posts relating to objects and events in nature(science): 13, 15, 16, 17, 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 40, 42, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 75, 79, 80, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 149, 159, 160, 164, 166, 169, 173, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202.

Posts relating to both: 12, 14, 19, 21, 26, 29, 30, 31, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 51, 52, 55, 61, 62, 69, 73, 76, 77, 81, 85, 89, 91, 93, 96, 104, 105, 108, 113, 118, 122, 124, 126, 127, 131, 134, 144, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 170, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 192, 195, 201, 203, 206.

Posts relating to neither: 78, 101, 125, 138, 171, 172, 174.

Special collections of posts:

A)Ayats(Signs) in the Universe Series: 19, 29, 31, 38, 39, 41, 127.

B)Posts relating specifically to the subject of Astronomy: 23, 24, 25, 28, 32, 36, 42, 47, 56, 57, 58, 66, 67, 75, 83, 84, 85, 90, 92, 94, 99, 102, 107, 109, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 128, 130, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 151, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 185, 186, 187, 202.

C)Posts relating to individual scientists, philosophers, cosmologists and poets, both inside and outside the Islamic tradition: 1, 11, 16, 20, 26, 27, 43, 44, 48, 55, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 130, 135, 150, 157, 158, 162, 178, 192.

D)Posts relating to my China Series: 171, 172, 174.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)

205)A magnificent early attempt at balancing revelation and reason in Shia Islam: harbinger of the Shiite Renaissance.

2007-06-29T11:33:00.000-05:00

To situate the Ikhwan al-Safa in the sequential sweep of Shia Ismaili history, see this post:

http://easynash.blogspot.com/2007/03/135the-uninterrupted-thread-of-search.html

The Classification of the Sciences according to the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’
Professor Godefroid De Callataÿ

Based on a paper delivered at The Institute of Ismaili Studies on 22nd May, 2003.

Abstract
The Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) is a unique work in Islamic history consisting of approximately fifty-two epistles (rasa’il) on a wide range of subjects. The authors of this encyclopaedic compendium, who are believed to have lived in Basra in Iraq in the course of the 10th century, are said to have some connections with the Ismaili movement. This article compares and comments on two systems of scientific classification put forward by the Ikhwan: the first of a hierarchical nature and the second as set out by the coterie of scholars in ‘Epistle VII’.

Key Words
Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, Ikhwan al-Safa’, encyclopaedia, science, philosophy, Basra, Shi‘a

Table of contents
Introduction
Two Types of Classification of Sciences in Rasa’il
The Science of Language
Religious and Conventional Sciences
Philosophical and Real Sciences
Ikhwan’s Division of Philosophy
A Comparison of the Two Classifications
Conclusion
Appendix

Introduction

The work most commonly known as the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ (or Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) is a Gnostic and philosophical encyclopaedia which was written in Arabic during the classical age of Islam and whose nature, contents and purposes have no equivalent of any kind both inside and outside the Muslim world. Scholarship specifically devoted to this work has only started to develop in recent times, so that large parts of the encyclopaedia remain unexplored. To this day only one section out of the four that form the whole corpus has been edited on a scientific basis and a vast majority of epistles have never been properly translated into English or into any other European language.

It is now generally agreed that the authors of the Epistles were high-ranked men of learning from the Shi‘a community, that they lived in Basra (Iraq) in the course of the 4th century of Islam (10th Century AD) and that they had at least some connections with the Ismaili movement. The encyclopaedia as we know it consists of 51 or 52 epistles, each one roughly dealing with one particular topic of human knowledge, to which one must add a ‘Concluding’ or ‘Comprehensive Epistle’ (Risalat al-jami‘a) at the end of the corpus. The Epistles are visibly classified according to an order designed to follow a step-by-step progression towards the most difficult of human wisdom. The esoteric nature of certain parts of the encyclopaedia, especially the last part of it, is a remarkable peculiarity of the Rasa’il. Another very conspicuous feature of the corpus is the great diversity and considerable eclecticism of its sources, together with the almost unparalleled scope of the matters involved.In recent times several important studies have been devoted to the sources and contents of the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’, most notably by Yves Marquet, Ian Richard Netton and Carmela Baffioni. We also find a few studies in which the Ikhwan’s way of classifying the sciences is briefly discussed or compared to other famous Muslim systems, such as those of al-Kindi (d. 873), al-Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Sina (d. 1037) or Ibn Khaldun (d. 1395). Yet, to the best of my knowledge, no significant attempt has been made so far so as to appraise the originality of the Brethren's own system. It is the aim of this paper to present some results of my current exploration of this topic.

Two Types of Classification of Sciences in Rasa’il

First of all, one must clarify which kind of classification we are talking about. For, on the one hand, there are those 51 or 52 epistles in the arrangement that has come down to us through the manuscript tradition and whose sequence may indeed qualify as a hierarchy of sciences in its own right. And then we have, on the other hand, the properly so called classification of sciences as the Brethren set it forth in Epistle VII, namely the one entitled ‘On the Scientific Arts and their Aim’. Indeed, the two lists differ from each other in several places and certain discrepancies are even so serious that they alone would seem to bear witness to a historical process of re-elaboration.

It seems appropriate to begin with the classification of sciences which the authors themselves outline in the second half of Epistle VII. For us, the most important part of this text is the overall presentation of the system, which begins with the following lines:

We should like to mention the kinds of sciences and the species of those kinds, in such a way that this can be an indication of their objects to those who study the science and in such a way that those people can be rightly guided towards what they are looking at. For the appetite of the souls towards the various sciences and educational matters are like the passions of the bodies towards the types of nourishment that differ from one another in savour, in colour and in smell.

These preliminary words look like an invitation to merely single out from the entire corpus of sciences one or two particular fields according to one’s tastes. They do not seem to presuppose, as such, any logical or rational sequence of the fields of knowledge that are to be mentioned next. In other terms, they could as well have been part of a typical piece of ‘adab literature like the Epistle on the Sciences (Risala fi’l-‘ulum) of Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (d. 1023), which is neither a systematic nor an exhaustive enumeration of sciences. But what comes next in Epistle VII clearly demonstrates that the Ikhwan had a well-organised construction in mind. The main structure is tripartite, as the text makes it plain:

Know, my brother, that there are three kinds of sciences with which people are busy, namely: the propaedeutic sciences, the religious and conventional sciences, the philosophical and real sciences.

The lines coming next are best displayed in the form of a table. See Appendix, Table 1 .

In the first place come the sciences which the Ikhwan call the propaedeutic (or disciplinary or training) sciences and which they define as ‘the sciences of education (‘adab) which have been set up mainly for the quest of subsistence and for the goodness of the living in this world’. The Brethren do not despise them, as all these sciences prove to be useful in the terrestrial accomplishment of man, yet their very segregation from the rest makes them clearly felt as inferior to the sciences of the two other groups, whose purpose is not restricted to the life here below.

The Ikhwan were not the first thinkers to speak of propaedeutic or training sciences (‘ilm al-riyadat). In his Epistle on the Number of Books by Aristotle, al-Kindi uses exactly the same words, yet under his pen the expression unambiguously referred to the four mathematical sciences that make up the so-called ‘Pythagorean quadrivium’, namely, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. From Plato at least, the importance of these four mathematical sciences as a prerequisite to any other studies had been endorsed in the West by such great authorities as Nicomachus of Gerasa, Boethius and Isidore of Seville, so as to become a commonplace of any discussion about philosophy and its divisions in the medieval schools of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This tradition of four liberal arts also went its way through Islam, as we can see from al-Kindi’s treatise on the number of Aristotle’s books but also from countless other evidence. The Pythagorean quadrivium was sometimes enlarged so as to include engineering and other ‘educational sciences’ (‘ilm al-ta‘lim), as al-Farabi calls them in his famous Enumeration of the Sciences. Very often, though, it held its original structure without alteration, as for instance in Avicenna’s Epistle on the Parts of Intellectual Sciences (Risala fi aqsam al-‘ulum al-‘aqliyya). Anyway, what matters most to us here is to see that the Ikhwan al-Safa’ do not range any science of the number among their disciplinary or training sciences. Rather, they choose to range the whole block of mathematics as a specific section of their ultimate group of sciences – the philosophical sciences – to which we shall return later in greater detail. As for the training sciences, their list does, indeed, include a section headed ‘calculations and operations’, but by it the Brethren no doubt refer to a very practical and strictly mundane use of numbers.

The Science of Language

Let us now briefly consider the other sections of this first group. Writing and reading, grammar, poetry and prosody, all these parts of what we would call the science of language, could easily be justified here as other kinds of prerequisite learning. ‘In the beginning was the Verb’: so does it also seem to be the case with several Muslim classifications of sciences. The first chapter of al-Farabi’s Enumeration of the Sciences is the one devoted to the ‘Science of Language’ (‘ilm al-lisan). In a similar way, Ibn al-Nadim’s monumental Fihrist, which may stand as a catalogue of sciences of its own, starts with a section which ‘describes the languages of people, Arab and foreign, the characteristics of their methods of writing, their types of script and forms of calligraphy’. To see that the sciences of the language receive, in the Rasa’il as well, a place in the beginning is no surprise, then. What is more significant, once again, is to find that all those fields are contemplated in their everyday applications only. There is no need, I think, to justify the presence of disciplines like crafts, trades, cultivation, breeding and the like, which are all clear examples of matters – should we say ‘arts’ or ‘sciences’? – whose interest does not overstep the bounds of this world. Yet the same must be said, we note, of the biographical and historical sciences, and even of magic, alchemy and the like, which are thus all regarded here as exclusively profane activities. In all, the group of propaedeutic sciences leaves us with the impression that it has been primarily set up so as to serve as a kind of lumber-room of mundane practices. But this could be regarded, after all, as a typical feature of ‘adab literature.

Religious and Conventional Sciences

Passing to the second group of sciences, we first have to take notice of its heading and definition. The Brethren call this the group of religious and conventional sciences (al-‘ulum al-shar‘iyyat al-wadi‘iyya), and then explain that these are the sciences that ‘have been set up for the healing of the souls and for the quest of the hereafter’. The notion that has to be emphasised here is certainly that of conventionality. The Ikhwan speak of sciences that ‘have been set up’, thus exactly as they had done previously with the training sciences. Obviously the religious sciences radically differ from those latter in that they concern, not this world, but the other one. Yet they do share with them the remarkable character of being conventional, that is, purposefully invented or created. The Ikhwan identify six categories of religious sciences and mention for each, the category of people in relation to it. We need not discuss at length about the science of revelation under its Qur’anic form (tanzil) nor about that of ‘stories and traditions’ (riwayat wa akhbar) and that of ‘jurisprudence’ (fiqh), for all these branches are quite expected in this context. Worthier of noting, perhaps, is that theology (kalam) which is frequently associated with jurisprudence in many Muslim classifications, is not even named here. Instead, the mentioning of a science of interpretation (ta‘wil), as a prerogative of the imams and the successors of the prophets is, of course, a plain indication of the Ikhwan’s belonging to Shi‘a Islam. Faithful to their eclecticism, the Ikhwan do not hesitate to mention ‘mysticism’ (tasawwuf) and various types of ascetic practices – whether Muslim or not – as religious sciences too. The last science mentioned in this group is yet another science of interpretation, namely the interpretation of dreams. This is an art, or a science, which is legitimated in Islam by some prophetic traditions (hadith), and even by such a famous Qur’anic passage as Sura Yusuf. As such, it is often mentioned in Muslim classifications of the sciences, as for instance in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima, where it is also ranged among the religious sciences.

Philosophical and Real Sciences

So, we finally arrive to the third group which the Brethren call the group of ‘philosophical and real sciences’ (al-falsafiyya al-haqiqa) and which consists, as they write, of four species, namely the mathematical (al-riyadiyyat), the logical (al-mantiqiyyat), the physical (al-tabi‘iyyat) and the divine sciences (al-ilahiyyat). For the present inquiry, this is also the most interesting part of the classification since, as the authors themselves point out in some places of their enumeration, the philosophical sciences are those for which they have composed individual epistles. In this respect, it also seems worthwhile quoting a few lines from the passage by which the Ikhwan assure the transition between the development on philosophical sciences and the final exhortation of the Epistle:

We have produced one epistle for each section of those sciences we have mentioned [the context indicates that the Ikhwan refer to the group of philosophical sciences], and we have mentioned in them some of those meanings. We have concluded them with a general epistle [the Risalat al-jami‘a], in order that it should become an incitement for the negligent people, a rectitude for the beginners, a desire for all those who study, a method for those who learn. Thanks to it, be happy, my brother, and offer this epistle to your brethren and friends, and make them longing for science, and urge them to renounce this world, and show them the way of the last Abode!

With this last group of philosophical sciences we come to more familiar grounds. So familiar, it looks, that the Brethren did not even seek to define this last group nor tell their readers for which reasons these sciences simply exist. What we are to infer, still, is that the sciences of that group have not been set up, but that they exist per se. It is in that sense, to be sure, that the Ikhwan can claim them to be real. Just a bit of common sense would be enough, I think, to make up what is lacking: namely that, in spite of their difference of nature, the philosophical sciences and the religious sciences both have the same purpose or the same objective, which is the happiness of the soul in the world here-after. In a crucial passage from Epistle XXVIII, which is dedicated to the limits of human knowledge, the Ikhwan compare those different ways to reach a same goal to the various locations of the pilgrims converging towards the Sacred House of God.

Now let us proceed with the Ikhwan’s division of philosophy. As is well-known, Aristotle had distinguished physics, mathematics and metaphysics as the three parts of what he called theoretic philosophy, whose purpose is the study of intelligible beings. Physics, he said, deals with those objects which cannot exist nor being conceived of as separate from matter and motion. At a superior level of abstraction, mathematics is concerned with beings which can be rationally isolated from matter and motion, but which nevertheless require both so as to exist. The highest level of abstraction falls to metaphysics, which deals with those intelligible beings that are not only conceivable as separate from matter and motion, but which can also exist without them. The Aristotelian division of speculative philosophy was transmitted to the Western Middle Ages by Boethius who in his De Trinitate spoke of those three parts as ‘philosophia naturalis’, ‘mathematica’ and ‘theologica’. In Islam, the threefold scheme was taken up by al-Kindi and his successors in the science of philosophy, the only point of discussion being the places in the sequence ascribed to physics and mathematics respectively. According to the ontological point of view, the sequence just mentioned should evidently be preferred. Yet from what has been said earlier we may also understand why the mathematical sciences, that is, ultimately, the Pythagorean quadrivium, could be regarded as a type of propaedeutic learning of its own.

This, we may note, seems to be the case of our text, where mathematics come before physics and metaphysics. With the Ikhwan, that other rational – and quite common – sequence is broken up by the incorporation of logic into the whole system. This is, however, nothing to be amazed at. In the footsteps of the Alexandrian commentators of Late Antiquity, the Arabs had for long been accustomed to regard the whole set of Aristotle's logical sciences as a prerequisite tool (Gr. organon) for the study of every rational science. As a result, logic and mathematics could both be viewed as necessary preliminaries to the general study of philosophy.

Ikhwan’s Division of Philosophy

Now we may focus on the way the Ikhwan further divide the group of philosophical sciences. It would be interesting to quote verbatim the passage of Epistle VII in which the Ikhwan explain and comment on each one of these subdivisions. For the sake of brevity, I shall here restrict myself to present that part of the text in the form of a table. See Appendix, Table 2 .

This table calls for a few explanations. Aristotle’s legacy is, of course, paramount. Not only the general structure, but even each part of entire sections such as logic or physics is purely Aristotelian in its very appellation. They will not retain our attention here. Nor shall I come back to the mathematical quadrivium of the first section, as I think enough of it has been said before. Definitely the most original section – and therefore the most interesting to look at – is the last one, which immediately strikes the reader with its non-Aristotelian elements. First of all, we learn that there is no such thing as one divine science, something to be validly compared with Aristotle’s ‘science of the beings as beings’ or with the ‘philosophia prima’ of medieval scholasticism. Instead, what we are faced with here is no less than five different disciplines, including politics and eschatology, which do not seem to have much in common at first sight. What is more perceptible, it would seem, is a kind of circular movement which has its origin in the most ineffable of beings – significantly enough the Ikhwan speak of the ‘knowledge’ and not of the ‘science’ of the Creator – which goes back to the same point – whence, the ‘Science of Return’ – after a step-by-step descent through other divine entities such as the angels, the souls and the spirits which pervade the universe. As it looks, a very curious place has been devoted to politics in the continuation of the Neoplatonic theory of emanation, especially as the further subdivisions of that science appear to be, for the most part of it, completely out of place in this section of divine sciences. For one part, indeed, the last three subdivisions of politics, i.e. the public, the domestic and the private, appear to agree rather well with the three parts of Aristotle’s practical philosophy, that is, politics, economics and ethics respectively. But, then, why did the Ikhwan not simply choose to take up this Aristotelian scheme of practical philosophy as yet another group of sciences of its own? Yet, more puzzling still is to find that the two other subdivisions of politics, i.e. the prophetic and the royal, are part of philosophy at all, whereas they would seem to fit much more easily in the group of religious sciences as described just above in the same passage?

It is at this stage, I think, that we may bring forward the list of the 51 or 52 Epistles that make up the corpus of the Ikhwan as it has come down to us. Table 3 in the Appendix displays the titles of sections and of individual epistles as they have been actually preserved in the manuscript tradition. As may be seen, some of these titles have a much flourished tone.

A Comparison of the Two Classifications

Let us now put face to face the two systems which the texts would seem to invite us to compare, namely the present list of titles and the group of philosophical and real sciences as described in Epistle VII. In the same way as this group of philosophical sciences, the whole corpus of the Rasa’il as we have it is divided into four main sections. So far, so good. But here come already the first discrepancies, as we can see at once that the main sections of the two systems do not exactly match one another. In spite of its title, Section I incorporates the logical sciences, thus appearing as a combination of the two first sections of the classification in Epistle VII. As a consequence of this blending, the group of physical sciences is shifted to Section II of our list. As for the last group, that of divine sciences, it appears to have been split up into two different sections, dealing respectively with ‘the sciences of the soul and of the intellect’ and ‘the nomic, divine and legal sciences’. These are, to be sure, significant changes. But we immediately notice other differences, as, for instance, the great number of rasa’il whose titles do not frame with any of the subdivisions of Epistle VII.

In the introduction of his La Philosophie des Ikhwan al-Safa’, Yves Marquet attempted to find out, in various passages of the encyclopaedia, the evidence for concluding that ‘our Epistles keep the traces of a certain vagueness, both in the order of chapters, and in the number of Epistles in each section.’ Bringing forward a certain number of indisputable indications from the text itself, the French scholar could draw the following inferences:

1)At the time when the first epistle of the group of physical sciences was written – that is, the one on matter, form, etc. – only five epistles of Section I, and seven of Section II had already been compiled.
2)Some epistles from Sections I and II were later modified, whether it be by amplification or by splitting of their contents. In a former state, there was, for instance, only one epistle on logic.
3)Each one of the four Sections was subsequently extended or completed with the incorporation of new epistles.

Needless to say, the comparison of our two systems confirms each one of these points. The changes, already evident for the mathematical and the physical sections, tend to become even more prominent in proportion as we come closer to the end of the corpus.

This being said, it remains that the Ikhwan’s assertion that they have dedicated a specific epistle to each one of the subdivisions is, to a very large extent, valid. The encyclopaedia opens with the four sciences of the quadrivium (arithmetic in I, geometry in II, astronomy in III and music in V). The only peculiarity is that a risala on geography has now been intercalated between astronomy and music, but this is hardly surprising since geography may indeed be conceived of as a sort of natural appendix to astronomy. The titles of the five rasa’il on logic correspond, not to the five sciences mentioned in Epistle VII (that is, poetics, rhetorics, topics, analytics and sophistics), but rather to the famous Book of Demonstration – in other words, the ‘Second Analytics’ (XIV) and to its four indispensable preliminaries, namely: the ‘Isagogue’ (X), the ‘Categories’ (XI) the ‘Peri Hermeneias’ or ‘De Interpretatione’ (XII) and the ‘First Analytics’ (XIII). The section of natural sciences is, as we have said, the one for which the sequence has been best preserved. Each of the seven parts of physics is, indeed, the place for a specific risala (from XV to XXII), with only one intercalation to be mentioned, namely the one on the quiddity of nature in XXII.

Clearly the most remarkable feature of our comparison concerns the last section, where the variations can no longer be perceived as negligible. Thus, apart from the epistle on the spiritual beings which we may indeed find in XLIX, the only other science to be found as such in the encyclopaedia is the last one, the ‘Science of Return’, but we notice immediately that this risala, which is number XXXVIII, has been placed in the third, not the fourth section. As for the science of politics and its own subdivisions, it would certainly be a mistake to assimilate it too quickly to what the Ikhwan report in their epistle L, on the species of politics.

So, how could these seeming oddities be accounted for? Well, at the risk of being a bit disappointing I would argue that these are typically matters which are best left unsolved for the time being. Surely, one could put forward chronological reasons, and assume, for instance, that a certain lapse of time must have separated the writing of Epistle VII – with its systematic and carefully reflected classification of the sciences – and the overall compilation of the Rasa’il. Those who, like Marquet, favour a longer chronology could certainly pretend that the authors of Epistle VII and those who put the final touch to that global undertaking were possibly not the same Ikhwan al-Safa’. In the present state of our information, one could even surmise that the arrangement of the Rasa’il in the form as we know it should not be ascribed to the authors themselves, but to later partisans or scholars. Yet all this is largely conjectural, and bound to remain so until we get a much clearer picture of the social, historical and epistemological context in which our Epistles began to be produced, collected and dispatched. As for so many other vexed questions about the Ikhwan, this kind of speculation will have much to gain from the forthcoming edition, on a truly scientific basis, of all the Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’.

At any rate, the perfect correspondence between the classification of Epistle VII and the sequence of Epistles making up the actual corpus should be considered an unrealistic expectation from the very moment one is willing to admit that the Rasa’il are but the most visible part of the undertaking. In many places, the Brethren refer or allude to their secret meetings known as majalis al-‘ilm (literally, ‘sessions of science’) and make it very clear that the highest degrees of their teaching programme are not committed to writing. As Marquet rightly summarised in the book mentioned above, ‘the Epistles are at the same time the master’s book and the student’s handbook, yet a handbook which must be completed with some oral teaching’. In this regard, we may add, it is significant that the section of our encyclopaedia for which the discrepancies with the classification of Epistle VII are especially thick on the ground is precisely the last one and that containing the highest level of esotericism.

Conclusion

For the time being, I should like to conclude this paper by emphasising only one point. It is customary to refer to the twofold division of the sciences in Islam: on the one hand, the conventional, religious and properly Islamic sciences; on the other hand, the rational, philosophical and foreign, that is, mainly, Greek sciences. This partition is possibly nowhere better evidenced than in al-Khwarizmi’s Mafatih al-‘ulum (The Keys to the Sciences), where its author – not to be confused with the great scientist al-Khwarizmi – ranges all disciplines under two different headings, respectively ‘the religious sciences and the Arabic sciences connected with them’ and ‘the non-Arab sciences, from the Greeks as well as from other nations’. In almost every subsequent discussion of the sciences, the same partition may be found again and again. Ibn Khaldun’s already mentioned Muqaddima provides us, indeed, with just one of the most famous examples of the distinction to be made between al-‘ulum al-naqliyya (‘the transmitted sciences’) and al-‘ulum al-‘aqliyya (‘the intellectual sciences’). Internal evidence now enables us to date al-Khwarizmi’s Keys to the Sciences not earlier than the year AD 977, which means, most probably than it was written later than the Rasa’il. It is, of course, a pity that we do not have more of the works that al-Kindi and al-Farabi are said to have written about the classification of the sciences. Yet, it appears from their extant writings on the subject – let us first think of al-Kindi’s Epistle on the Number of Books by Aristotle or al-Farabi’s Enumeration of the Sciences – that neither of them had based the classification of the sciences on this partition. As mentioned in the beginning of this paper, my exploration of the classifications of sciences as reflected by Islamic encyclopaedias is far from being completed. Yet, in the present state of my investigation, I would certainly be inclined to credit the Ikhwan with a truly pioneering role in that respect.

Appendix

Table 1: the general classification of the sciences according to Epistle VIII.

I. The propaedeutic (sciences), that is, the sciences of education which have been set up mainly for the quest of subsistence and for the goodness of the living in this world, are of nine kinds:

1.writing and reading;
2.language and grammar;
3.calculation and operations;
4.poetic and prosody;
5.auguries and auspices, and the like;
6.magic, talismans, alchemy, tricks and the like;
7.professions and crafts;
8.sale and purchase, trades, cultivation and breeding;
9.biographies and histories.

II. The religious and conventional (sciences), that is, the sciences which have been set up for the healing of the souls and for the quest of the hereafter, are of six kinds:

1.science of revelation;
2.science of interpretation;
3.narratives and reports;
4.jurisprudence, norms and laws;
5.recollection, exhortations, asceticism and mysticism;
6.interpretation of dreams.

The learned in the science of revelation are those who read the Qur’an and know it by heart. The learned in the science of interpretation are the imams and the successors of the prophets. The learned in the narratives are the specialists of the Tradition. The learned in the laws and the norms are the jurists. The learned in the recollection and the exhortations are the worshippers, ascetics, monks and the like. The learned in the interpretation of dreams are the interpreters.

III. The philosophical sciences are of four kinds:

1.mathematics;
2.logic;
3.natural sciences;
4.metaphysics.

Table 2: the division of the philosophical sciences according to Epistle VII

1. Mathematical sciences
arithmetic
geometry
astronomy
music

2. Logical sciences
poetics
rhetorics
topics
analytics
sophistics

3. Natural sciences
science of corporal principles
science of the heaven and the world
science of coming-to-be and passing-away
science of atmospheric events
science of minerals
science of plants
science of animals

4. Divine sciences
knowledge of the Creator
science of spiritual beings
science of psychic beings
science of politics (with 5 subdivisions: prophetic, royal, public, domestic, private)
science of Return

Table 3: The list of titles of the Rasa’il

Section I: the mathematical sciences (14 epistles)

1.Epistle I: On the number.
2.Epistle II: The epistle entitled jumatriya, dealing with geometry (handasa), and account of its quiddity.
3.Epistle III: The epistle entitled asturunumiya, dealing with the science of the stars and the composition of the spheres.
4.Epistle IV: On geography (al-jughrafiya).
5.Epistle V: On music (al-musiqa).
6.Epistle VI: On the arithmetical and geometrical proportions with respect to the refinement of the soul and the reforming of the characters.
7.Epistle VII: On the scientific arts and their aim.
8..Epistle VIII: On the practical arts and their aim.
9.Epistle IX: Where one accounts for characters, the causes of their difference and the [various] species of the evils which [strike] them; anecdotes drawn from the educational rules of the Prophets and cream of the morals of the sages.
10.Epistle X: On the Isagogè (isaghuji).
11.Epistle XI: On the ten categories, that is, qatighuriyas.
12.Epistle XII: On the meaning of the Peri Hermeneias (baramaniyas).
13.Epistle XIII: On the meaning of the Analytics (anulutiqa).
14.Epistle XIV: On the meaning of the Second Analytics (anulutiqa al-thaniya).

Section II: The sciences of the body and of nature (17 epistles)

1.Epistle XV: Where one accounts for the hylè, the form, the motion, the time and the place, together with the meanings of those (things) when they are linked to one another.
2.Epistle XVI: The epistle entitled ‘the heavens and the world’, with respect to the reforming of the soul and the refinement of the characters.
3.Epistle XVII: Where one accounts for the coming-to-be and the passing-away.
4.Epistle XVIII: On meteors.
5.Epistle XIX: Where one accounts for the coming-to-be of the minerals.
6.Epistle XX: On the quiddity of nature.
7.Epistle XXI: On the kinds of plants.
8.Epistle XXII: On the modalities of the coming-to-be of the animals and of their kinds.
9.Epistle XXIII: On the composition of the bodily system.
10.Epistle XXIV: On the sense and the sensible, with respect to the refinement of the soul and the reforming of the characters.
11.Epistle XXV: On the place where the drop of sperm falls into.
12.Epistle XXVI: On the claim of the sages that man is a ‘micro cosmos’.
13.Epistle XXVII: On the modalities of birth of the particular souls in the natural human bodily systems.
14.Epistle XXVIII: Where one accounts for the capacity of man to know, which limit he [can] arrive at, what he [can] grasp of the sciences, which end he arrives at and which nobility he raises to.
15.Epistle XXIX: On the wisdom of death and birth.
16.Epistle XXX: On what is particular to the pleasures; on the wisdom of birth and death and the quiddity of both.
17.Epistle XXXI: On the reasons of the difference in languages, graphical figures and expressions.

Section III: The sciences of the soul and of the intellect (10 epistles)

1.Epistle XXXII: On the intellectual principles of the existing beings according to the Pythagoreans.
2.Epistle XXXIII: On the intellectual principles according to the Brethren of Purity.
3.Epistle XXXIV: On the meaning of the claim of the sages that the world is a ‘macranthropos’.
4.Epistle XXXV: On the intellect and the intelligible.
5.Epistle XXXVI: On revolutions and cycles.
6.Epistle XXXVII: On the quiddity of love.
7.Epistle XXXVIII: On resurrection and anastasis.
8.Epistle XXXIX: On the quantity of kinds of motions.
9.Epistle XL: On causes and effects.
10.Epistle XLI: On definitions and descriptions.

Section IV: The nomic, divine and legal sciences (11 epistles)

1.Epistle XLII: On views and religions.
2.Epistle XLIII: On the quiddity of the Way (leading) to God – How Powerful and Lofty is He!
3.Epistle XLIV: Where one accounts for the belief of the Brethren of Purity and the doctrine of the divine men.
4.Epistle XLV: On the modalities of the relations of the Brethren of Purity, their mutual help and the authenticity of sympathy and affection (they have for one another), whether it be for the religion or for what is pertaining to this world.
5.Epistle XLVI: On the quiddity of faith and the characteristics of the believers who realise [those things].
6.Epistle XLVII: On the quiddity of the divine nomos, the conditions of prophecy and the quantity of characteristics (the Prophets); on the doctrines of the divine men and of the men of God.
7.Epistle XLVIII: On the modalities of the call (to go) to God.
8.Epistle XLIX: On the modalities of states of the spiritual beings.
9.Epistle L: On the modalities of the species of politics and their quantity.
10.Epistle LI: On the modalities of the arrangement of the world as a whole.
11.Epistle LII: On the quiddity of magic, incantations and the evil eye.

easynash

Islam, eminently logical, placing the greatest emphasis on knowledge, purports to understand God's creation:Aga Khan 4(2006)
The God of the Quran is the One whose Ayats(Signs) are the Universe in which we live, move and have our being:Aga Khan 3(1952)
Our interpretation of Islam places enormous value on knowledge. Knowledge is the reflection of faith if it is used properly. Seek out that knowledge and use it properly:Aga Khan 4(2005)