by Ehsan Masood
The story of Islamic-era geometric design also helps to provide important clues to two questions. First: to what extent did the needs of religion drive the quest for science and knowledge? And second: to what extent did Muslims adopt scientific methods to help them carry out their faith obligations?
Faith and learning
Al-Khwarizmi’s book on algebra as a way of calculating inheritance as prescribed in the Qur’an and al-Battani’s trigonometrical solutions to finding the direction of Mecca both point to the fact that, in a limited number of cases, the needs of faith did indeed inspire feats of learning. However, when it comes to the second question, it is clear that the mass of Muslims did not feel comfortable having to get their heads around a complicated new science – indeed, on the contrary, they discovered that there were far simpler ways of pleasing God.
Yahya Michot of the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut says that an important reason why Islam became so popular in such a short space of time was that its rituals were relatively simple to carry out. They did not demand a big commitment to learn new techniques, nor did they require a mastery of complicated instruments; nor indeed did Muslims need access to higher expert authorities in being told what to do.
So, whereas al-Battani devised a clever way of determining the direction of Mecca, believers (then as now) did not immediately rush out to learn the principles of trigonometry. A much easier way of finding Mecca was to follow the practice of Muhammad, who would pray due south when not in Mecca and who is reported to have said: ‘What is between east and west is a qibla.’ Many of the earliest mosques point due south. A few were aligned along the direction of a road that might be heading towards Mecca. Others pointed towards specific walls of the Ka’bah.
Similarly, whereas Islamic-era astronomers took pains to compute accurate tables on the phases of the moon, Sunni-Islamic tradition to this day demands that a new moon need only be spotted with the naked eye for a new calendar month to begin. Theoretically speaking, complex tables are not needed. And whereas mathematicians have for centuries been working on ever more accurate tables for the times of prayer, throughout the Islamic world (especially in hot, outdoor environments), many among the faithful continue to rely on the length of a shadow to work out the times for prayers during the day.
11
At Home in the Elements
My wealth let sons and brethren part. Some things they cannot share: my work well done, my noble heart – these are my own to wear.
Jabir ibn-Hayyan, 8th century
None of the sciences practised in Islamic times had such an ambiguous reception in the modern age as chemistry. The very name of the science has many meanings. Chemistry was a field of study in ancient Egypt and also in classical Greece. Somewhere, during this time, emerged the word kimia, which is believed to have been modified by Arabic-speaking scientists to al-Kimya. However, al-Kimya is also the source of the word ‘alchemy’, the technique, so rich in mystery, which aimed to manufacture gold and silver from other metals.
In early Islam, chemistry and alchemy – just as was the case with astronomy and astrology – were not nearly so clearly divided as they are now, even though there were scientists such as ibn-Sina who were as stridently sceptical of alchemy as anyone today. Others, however, were happy to work within both traditions and none more so than the giant of Islamic-era chemistry, Jabir ibn-Hayyan, known to the Latin world as Geber.
The earliest biographical mention of Jabir comes in the Fihrist, the 10th-century index of the leading books of the time, written by the Baghdad scholar ibn al-Nadim. Ibn al-Nadim describes Jabir as a spiritual healer belonging to the Shia tradition. But other scholars were less sure, and believed that his name might have been ‘invented’ as a cover for others.
There was controversy in Europe, too, where Jabir’s work appeared in Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries in the form of five treatises. Some historians claim that these did not come from Arabic originals, but were penned by a contemporary European who they dub ‘pseudo-Geber’. Historians have delved into the linguistic turns of phrase in the treatises in order to see if this is true. Some say that the authentic Arabic phrases that can be found in the text prove that it came from an Arabic original. Others say that there were plenty of proven forgeries which deliberately used Arabic phrases to create an aura of authenticity.
When it comes to other texts attributed to Jabir, the matter doesn’t get any easier. Much of his work was written in codes and symbols. It’s not clear why he wrote this way. It may be that, like so many alchemists, he wrote in code in order to keep his work secret from anyone but the initiated. Alternatively, his reason for writing in code might have been to avoid the risk of being charged with heresy for his more challenging work. However, the interchangeable symbolism of numbers, letters and words is endemic to the Arabic language – and helped to give us the very profound, scientific and practical mathematics of algebra.
The real Jabir
However, two factors indisputably show that however it came about, and whoever actually produced them, these treatises represent a towering scientific achievement which helped to lay the foundations of modern chemistry. One is the Jabir texts whose origin we do know for sure, which are rich in descriptions of the basic laboratory techniques and experimental methods that are essential to chemistry. Second is the real chemistry – the key substances that were identified such as sulphuric and nitric acid, the processes that were discovered including distillation, sublimation and reduction, and the scientific equipment that appeared, such as the alembic and the retort. All these things came from somewhere, and if it wasn’t a man called Jabir, then it was someone who deserves an equally high place in the history of science.
It is thought that Jabir was born in Tus in Khorasan (in modern Iran) in around 722, and that his father was a pharmacist. It may be that he got most of his chemical training from his father, but he was also living in Persia where there was a long alchemical tradition. It is said, though, that he was trained in the esoteric arts as an apprentice to one of Islam’s most revered figures: Ja’far al-Sadiq. References throughout Jabir’s works to ‘My Master’ are thought to be to al-Sadiq. Thereafter, nothing is known of him until he appears in Kufa in Iraq in the time of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. It seems he was drawn nearer Baghdad by the Barmakids, the powerful Persian family who acted as advisors to the first Abbasid caliphs. But that Barmakid connection, though it gave Jabir the finance and the status to work on his science at the highest level, was to prove his downfall. When Ja’far the Barmakid was executed by Caliph Harun, those most closely attached to the Barmakids lost their status or, like Jabir, were kept under house arrest.
The quest for artificial life
In his work, Jabir also drew on traditions from Egypt, where there was not only much knowledge of chemical processes, but a history of esoteric masters such as Hermes Trismegistus (the ‘triple master’) who explored the occult nature of the relationship between different substances. This Egyptian tradition probably reached the Islamic world via ancient Greece. The other tradition he was influenced by was that of the ancient Persian Zoroastrian magi, which Jabir had no doubt encountered directly in Tus.
Jabir delved deep into alchemy. Some say his ultimate aim was not the usual quest to turn base metal into gold, but something more. It was the quest for takwin, the artificial creation of life, and in his writings he alludes to recipes for creating animals and even humans. This quest was subsequently to inspire the literature of Faust, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and modern biologists such as Craig Venter. No one knows, of course, whether Jabir was seriously experimenting with this, or whether his writings on this matter were symbolic.
Yet though his alchemical work, Jabir also explored chemistry in a clear, matter-of-fact, and lucidly experimental way that was both entirely new and completely his own. This is why Jabir is often described as the ‘father of chemistry’. ‘The first essential in chemistry’, he insisted, ‘is that you should perform practic
al work and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain the least degree of mastery.’
The experimental method
The methods of working described in Jabir’s writings are detailed, and helped to put chemistry on a scientific footing. His descriptions of how to produce certain chemicals, or perform certain processes, are called recipes, and they read like the instructions for making a cake. But they are clear enough for anyone to follow, and they establish a template for detailed meticulousness. Such was Jabir’s care for precision that he invented a scale that could weigh accurately within less than a sixth of a gram. It may be that this precision led him to speculate that when chemicals combine, their basic nature is retained at a level that is far too small to see.
For Jabir, as for so many scientists, experimenting with matter meant going into his work room and seeing what happened when he mixed substances, heated them, cooled them, crushed them, baked them, stirred them and so on – the classic vision of the alchemist’s den and later the chemistry laboratory. To do this with the precision he needed, Jabir used or invented a variety of flasks, such as the retort. He is also thought to have discovered various chemical processes such as reduction and sublimation and, most important of all, distillation – or at least if he didn’t discover distillation, he found a way to achieve it with his invention of the alembic, a simple enclosed flask for heating liquid, with a spout for draining off the drops that form as the vapour condenses in the top of the flask.
With the alembic, wine could be made into alcohol. This was not used for making strong alcoholic drinks, of course, since Islam forbids them, but it became the key process in a number of chemically-based industries which took off in the Islamic world, including perfumery, ink- and dye-making, and producing drugs and particular chemicals. The alembic was also later used for distilling mineral oil to make kerosene, which was used for fuelling oil lamps.
Jabir is also credited with the discovery of strong acids – sulphuric, hydrochloric and nitric – which were so strong that they could dissolve metals. Fortunately he also discovered the substances that could neutralise them, alkalis – another Arabic word that has come to us through chemistry. He also discovered the one acid that could dissolve gold and platinum: aqua regia or royal water, the short-lived combination of hydrochloric and nitric acids. This discovery inspired countless generations to pursue the search for the magic formula that would turn base metal into gold. But the discovery of strong acids and alkalis is more fundamental than it might sound at first. These substances are essential in modern chemistry and in the industrial chemical processes which produce so many of the things we rely on today, from plastics to artificial fertilisers.
Jabir also tried to provide a framework for classifying chemicals. Part of this came from the old Greek notion of the four elements – fire, earth, air and water – but he developed this by grouping substances into metals, non-metals and substances that could be distilled. This is not so very different from the groups found within the modern periodic table, which identify metals and non-metals, as well as volatile substances.
Al-Razi and beyond
A century or so after Jabir, al-Razi, who was soon to be more famous for his medical achievements, began to pick up where Jabir had left off. Al-Razi refined Jabir’s classifications, and distinguished between naturally occurring substances and those created artificially in the laboratory. He also emphasised the need for proof by experimentation, and refined the raw processes of distillation, evaporation and filtration.
Mineral and herbal drugs had been in use for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years before al-Razi’s time, but he contributed to the development of pharmacology – in which chemicals are carefully mixed in small but precise quantities and prepared to make drugs. Other scientists such as al-Biruni, al-Zahrawi and Abu al-Mansur Muwaffaq took this further, and their treatises on drugs and methods of preparing them had a major impact in Western Europe when they reached that region in the late middle ages.
Alchemy in the Egyptian-Persian-Arabic tradition continued to attract serious-minded adherents into the late 18th century – Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton were closet alchemists. But eventually a distrust of the occult – and of charlatan alchemists who promised a way to create gold – undermined its attraction so fundamentally that it waned, though has still not completely vanished. Chemistry, on the other hand, had been placed on a firm scientific foundation and today is one of the key scientific disciplines.
12
Ingenious Devices
I was fervently attached to the pursuit of this subtle science [of machines] and persisted in the endeavour to arrive at the truth. The eyes of opinion looked to me to distinguish myself in this beloved science. Types of machines of great importance came to my notice, offering possibilities for types of marvellous control.
Badi al-Zaman al-Jazari, Turkey, 1206
Few figures in Islamic scientific history are more colourful or intriguing than three brothers: Jafar-Muhammad, Ahmad and al-Hasan. They lived in Baghdad in the time of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun in the early 9th century, and have come to be known collectively as the ‘Banu Musa brothers’. Their father, Musa ibn-Shakir, is reported to have been a highwayman when he was young, but somehow he managed to put his past behind him, becoming not only an astronomer and astrologer but a close friend of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid himself. He died young, leaving three small sons. Harun’s son, the Caliph al-Mamun, patron of science and rationality, made a point of looking after them.
As the young boys grew up, they were given the run of al-Mamun’s House of Wisdom, and they clearly made the most of it. They were all brilliant scholars, and did much to stimulate the translation project, sending out envoys and paying small fortunes to retrieve manuscripts from the Byzantine empire and elsewhere. They quickly mastered Greek and were soon writing their own important treatments of the maths of cones and ellipses, building on the work of Apollonius. They were also accomplished astronomers, and at al-Mamun’s request were able to make an accurate measurement of the earth’s circumference. Yet, apart from their reputation for stirring up trouble, what really made their name was the wonderful machines and devices they created to delight the Baghdad court.
Marvellous toys
The Banu Musa may well have designed industrial or scientific machines, but if so they are lost. What we do know of their work is that they designed toys. They describe 100 of their devices in a work called the Book of Artifices written in 830, and each one that historians have so far examined is a masterpiece of ingenuity. Fountains that change shape by the minute, clocks with all kinds of little gimmicks, trick jugs, flutes that play by themselves, water jugs that serve drinks automatically, and even a full-size mechanical tea girl that actually serves tea. Such devices still astonish today when they are reconstructed, but they must have made al-Mamun’s court gasp with wonder and delight.
Although they are just toys, the inventiveness that the Banu Musa put into them is impressive, as is the ground-breaking technology in one area of engineering: the field of automation. By making clever use of one- or two-way self-closing and -opening valves, devices for delaying action and responding to feedback, and simple mechanical memories, they created automatic systems which are no different in principle from modern machines. They used mainly water under pressure rather than electronics, but many of the operating principles are the same.
Using water to tell the time
The idea of using water pressure to achieve automation reached its pinnacle in the development of clocks. The need to know what time to pray was a crucial spur in Islam to the development of water clocks which could keep the time through day and night. Water clocks such as that of al-Zarqali in Toledo (11th century) became the wonders of the age.
One extraordinary device is a water clock in the shape of an elephant, designed by an engineer called Badi al-Zaman al-Jazari and illustrated and described in his Book of Ingenious Devices (1206)
. The elephant clock combined water principles from Archimedes with an Indian elephant and water timer, Chinese dragons, an Egyptian phoenix, a Persian carpet and Arabian figures.
Al-Jazari was born in the region of al-Jazira between the Tigris and Euphrates in the 12th century. This was a time when the Turkic-speaking peoples were already beginning to make this part of the world their own, and in 1174 he went to work for the Banu Artuq, the rulers of Amid (now known as Diyar Bakir in southern Turkey). There may have been many engineers as talented and as innovative as al-Jazari, but he was also a skilled communicator who could write and draw too. He must have been an old man, though, when the Prince of Amid, Nasir al-Din Mahmud, ordered him to write his book, for within a few months of completing it he was dead.
Researchers are just beginning to go through this book, which seems to be the culmination of Islamic mechanical technology, to try out some of these machines – either on computers or by building models according to al-Jazari’s designs. What they are finding is beginning to cause quite a stir.
Technology transfer
Historians often find it hard to know precisely how important ancient technology was to the making of the modern world. In many areas of science, for example, the discovery of scientific manuscripts can help scholars to follow a paper trail which can show how ideas spread. Manuscripts also contain acknowledgements, which tell the reader who else needs to be credited with particular discoveries. This is how we know, for example, that the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus used sources written in Arabic.