Abbas ibn Firnas

There's scholarly consensus that ibn Firnasfull name was born in Ronda, in the Takurunna province; lived in Córdoba, and was an Umayyad (client) of Berber decent. His lineage may have been linked to the early Muslim conquests of the Iberian Peninsula. Later accounts emphasizing Arabic contributions to science may identify Abbas ibn Firnas in the broader frame of Islamic cultural heritage or as native muladí. == Work ==

Abbas ibn Firnas devised a means of manufacturing colourless glass, invented various glass planispheres, made corrective lenses ("reading stones"), devised an apparatus consisting of a chain of objects that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars, and developed a process for cutting rock crystal that allowed Al-Andalus to cease exporting quartz to Egypt to be cut. He also designed the al-Maqata, a water clock, and a prototype for a kind of metronome. == Aviation ==

Some seven centuries after the death of Firnas, the Algerian historian Ahmad al-Maqqari (d. 1632) wrote a description of Ibn Firnas that included the following: Al-Maqqari is said to have used in his history works "many early sources no longer extant", but in the case of Ibn Firnas, he does not cite his sources for the details of the reputed flight, though he does claim that one verse in a ninth-century Arab poem is actually an allusion to Ibn Firnas's flight. The poem was written by Mu'min ibn Said, a court poet of Córdoba under Muhammad I (d. 886), amir of the Emirate of Córdoba, who was acquainted with and usually critical of Ibn Firnas. It has been suggested that Ibn Firnas's attempt at glider flight might have inspired the attempt by Eilmer of Malmesbury between 1000 and 1010 in England, but there is no evidence supporting this hypothesis. == Armen Firman ==

According to some secondary sources, about 20 years before Ibn Firnas attempted to fly he witnessed a man named Armen Firman wrap himself in a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts and jump from a tower in Córdoba, intending to use the garment as wings on which he could glide. The alleged attempt at flight was unsuccessful, but the garment slowed his fall enough that he sustained only minor injuries. Al-Maqqari's account of Ibn Firnas, being the sole primary source of the flight story, == Legacy ==

In 1973, a statue of Ibn Firnas by the sculptor Badri al-Samarrai was installed at the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. In 1976, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved of naming a crater on the moon after him as Ibn Firnas. In 2011, one of the bridges going over the Guadalquivir river in Córdoba, Spain, was named the "Abbas ibn Firnás Bridge". A British one-plane airline, Firnas Airways, was also named after him. == See also ==