Science & Islam: A History

The official tie-in to the BBC television series, Science and Islam tells the story of one of history's most misunderstood yet rich and fertile periods in science: the extraordinary Islamic scientific revolution between 700 and 1400 CE. It charts a religious empire's scientific heyday, its decline, and the many debates that now surround it.  Between the 8th and 15th centuries, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in Spain advanced our knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine and philosophy to new heights.  It was Musa al-Khwarizmi, for instance, who developed algebra in 9th-century Baghdad, drawing on work by mathematicians in India; there was also al-Jazari, a Turkish engineer of the 13th century whose achievements include the crank, the camshaft, and the reciprocating piston; and ibn-Sina, whose textbook Canon of Medicine was a standard work in Europe's universities until the 1600s. These scientists were pa..

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