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By A.I MAKKI
The spread of the Religion of Islam had forever altered the course of the history of the world. Within a short span after the Holy Prophet Muhammad had passed away from this world, the Muslims had carried the religion preached by him to different parts of Asia and Europe. In less than nine years, after the death of the Holy Prophet they were in control of Persia. A year later, they had become the rulers of Egypt. From there, they swept westward and nine decades later, they were in control of the entire North African Continent and their rule stretched from Egypt to the land of Morocco. They extended their rule into Spain and Portugal. On the other side, the lands of Muslims extended eastward into India and eventually to the islands of South East Asia...
The city of Baghdad became the center of the intellectual world for the Muslims of the Islamic world. Built near the ruins of Babylon in the year 762 C.E, the new city of Baghdad enjoyed the patronage of the Great Caliphs of Islamic Empire. Harun al-Rashid the Caliph commissioned a project where the work of Greek philosophers and scholars was to be translated into Arabic. Caliph al-Mamun who came after him continued the project that had been started by his predecessor and employed scholars from different faiths to make those translations. Books were collected from different sources and their translations were paid worth their weight in gold.
As a result, a flood of new ideas from different began to spread from Baghdad to different parts of the Muslim world. In due course, these ideas were brought into Christian Europe, where Latin translations were made from the Arabic books. The decimal system in arithmetic, which is in use today, was popularized by the Arabs.
The Caliph al-Mamun directed his scholars to recalculate the circumference of the earth. They in turn used the same method devised by a Greek geographer ten centuries earlier. Through their calculations, they arrived at the figure of 57 Arabic miles. These values were much too small, owing to errors in linear measurements. Nevertheless, an attempt had been made in the right direction.
MUSLIM CONTRIBUTIONS TO GEOMORPHOLGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
The writings of the Arab geographers in the period between 800 C.E to 1400 C.E were far more superior to their contemporaries in the Christian world. The Muslims had access to their own translations from the Greek sources. They had also a first hand account of their own travelers who had made voyages to different parts of the world. The result was that the information possessed by the Muslim scholars on the subject of Geography was far more superior to those of the Christian scholars.
Ibn Haykal was the earliest known among the Arab travelers who had spent the last thirty years of his life (943-973C.E) journeyed to remotest parts of Africa and Asia. On his voyage along the African east coast twenty degrees south of equator; he noticed the fact that a considerable number of people inhabited these parts than what was thought before. The Greeks believed that the areas surrounding the equator were uninhabitable owing to the extremes in temperature.
The Arabic scholars also made detailed studies regarding climate. In the year 1921, C.E al-Balkhi gathered reports of the climatic features observed by the Arab travelers to different parts of the world and produced the world’s first climatic atlas-the kitab al-Ashkal. Around the same time, al-Masudi traveled south as far as modern day Mozambique and wrote a good description of monsoons, which he had observed in the course of his travels, where he describes evaporation from water surfaces and the condensation of the moisture in the form of clouds. Al-Masudi died in the year 951 C.E
Al-Maqdisi (985 C.E) divided the world into fourteen different climatic regions. He recognized the fact the climate varied both with the latitude and by the change of position from the east to the west. He also presented for the first time the idea that the southern hemisphere was mostly Open Ocean, whereas the northern hemisphere was made up mostly of land.
Al-Biruni (1030 C.E) another Arab Geographer made important observations in the shaping of landforms of the world in his book Kitab al-Hind. In this book, he recognized the significance of rounded stones, found in the alluvial deposits to the south of Himalayas and suggested that the stones became rounded as they rolled down in the torrential mountain streams. He also recognized the fact that the alluvial deposits close to the mountains, were coarse grained in texture, and fine-textured away from the mountains. In his book, he also makes mention the belief of the Hindus that the tides of the sea were influenced by the moon. Another interesting observation made by him was that the night ceased to exist as one traveled south towards the pole. This gives the impression that there must have been voyagers and explorers who had traveled as far as the South Pole before the 11th century.
Ibn Sina was another contributor to the knowledge of the formation of landforms. He observed closely the mountain streams cutting paths and valleys in the mountains of Central Asia. He concluded in his observations that the mountains were constantly being worn out by streams. He believed that the highest peaks occurred only in places where the rocks were resistant to erosion by water. According to him, mountains were raised up and steadily subjected to the process of erosion and this continued slowly and gradually. He also records the presence of fossils in the rocks of high mountains. He attributed this to the nature’s effort to create living plants and animals, which had ended in failure.
Al-Idrisi, educated in the University of Cordoba, was one of the scholars that Roger II of Sicily had brought to Palermo. Under his direction, the king dispatched numerous observers to different parts of the world, where Idrisi had pointed out uncertainties concerning the actual arrangement of mountains, rivers, and coastlines. Based on the information collected by them, he wrote a book on Geography that added new knowledge to the existing ideas of those times. In the year 1154 C.E, he wrote a book called “Amusement for those who desire to travel around the world.” In his book, he corrects ideas of the enclosed Indian Ocean and the Caspian Sea being the gulf of the world ocean. He also corrected the course of numerous rivers, including the Rivers of Danube and Niger, and the position of several mountain ranges.
Ibn Batuta was one of the greatest Muslim travelers of his time. At the age of twenty-one he set out to make a pilgrimage to Makkah. He hoped to complete his studies there, in Islamic Law. During this journey, he was fascinated more by the people and the lands in which he passed through. He decided to devote all his life to travel on reaching Makkah. He always took care to use the same route twice in his journeys across the lands in which he passed through. His travels took him to different parts of Arabia. He sailed across the Red Sea and visited Ethiopia. From there he sailed along the coast of East Africa as far as Kilwa. At Kilwa, he learnt about the Arab trading post at Sofala in Mozambique. He reached the same conclusions of Ibn Haykal that the regions in the torrid zones near the equator were inhabited by people, which justified the Arab trading posts. He traveled to Baghdad, Persia, and Central Asia. From Afghanistan, he entered India, where he served in the court of the emperor of Delhi. The emperor later appointed him as the ambassador of China. Maldives islands, Ceylon and Sumatra were some of the other places visited by him. He ended his travels after traveling across North Africa for the last time. In a span of 30 years, he had covered 75,000 miles. He dictated a lengthy account of his travels. Unfortunately, his book written in Arabic had little impact on the Christian world.
Ibn Khaldun was the last of the Muslim scholars to make a major contribution in shaping the geography of today’s world. In his book Muqadimmah (1377) he discusses man’s physical environment and its influence on his characteristics that are related to his culture, way of living, rather than to the environment. In his book, be describes the various stages of social organization, identifying the desert nomad as primitive and purest. He suggests the inactive city dweller as dependent on luxuries and of being morally soft. The author also discusses cities and their proper location in the map of the world. He was the first Muslim scholar to turn his attention especially to man-environment relations.
These great scholars and adventurers of the Muslim world influenced the world with their ideas and observations. Regrettably, there is little credit given to these people in the western world today. Western scholars who came after them presented similar ideas and conclusions regarding the working of the various processes of nature and some of their observations erroneously presented are still being taught to the schoolchildren today. The Muslim scholars and the explorers were the pioneers who may be considered to have discovered the true scope and the nature of geographical inquiry.
Last update : 24-09-2003 14:46
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