Early caliphates Seventh century s and
rubāʻīyāt, from the
University of Pennsylvania library's Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection •
Ghazal: A form of
Islamic poetry that originated from the
Arabian Peninsula in the late 7th century.
Eighth century •
Arabesque: The distinctive Arabesque style was developed by the 11th century, having begun in the 8th or 9th century in works like the
Mshatta Facade. •
Astrolabe with angular scale : The astrolabe, originally invented some time between 200 and 150 BC, was further developed in the
medieval Islamic world, where
Muslim astronomers introduced angular scales to the design, and those of
Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (c. 865–925), contain the earliest known classifications of chemical substances. •
Damascus steel: Damascus blades were first manufactured in the
Near East from
ingots of
Wootz steel that were imported from India. •
Modern Oud: Although string instruments existed before Islam, the
oud was developed in
Islamic music and was the ancestor of the European
lute. •
Sulfur-mercury theory of metals: First attested in pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana's
Sirr al-khalīqa ("The Secret of Creation", c. 750–850) and in the works attributed to
Jabir ibn Hayyan (written c. 850–950), the sulfur-mercury theory of metals would remain the basis of all theories of metallic composition until the eighteenth century. •
Tin-glazing: The earliest tin-glazed pottery appears to have been made in
Abbasid Iraq/
Mesopotamia in the 8th-century. The oldest fragments found to-date were excavated from the palace of
Samarra about north of Baghdad. •
Panemone windmill: The earliest recorded
windmill design found was
Persian in origin, and was invented around the 7th-9th centuries.
Ninth century •
Algebra discipline:
Al-Khwarizmi is considered the father of the algebra discipline. The word
Algebra comes from the Arabic الجبر (
al-jabr) in the title of his book ''
Ilm al-jabr wa'l-muḳābala''. He was the first to treat algebra as an independent discipline in its own right. •
Algebraic reduction and balancing, cancellation, and like terms:
Al-Khwarizmi introduced reduction and balancing in
algebra. It refers to the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of
like terms on opposite sides of the equation, which the term
al-jabr (algebra) originally referred to. •
Automatic controls: "Although the
Banu Musa took Greek models as their starting point, they went well beyond anything achieved by Hero or Philo. In particular, it is their preoccupation with automatic controls that distinguishes them not only from their Greek predecessors but from their Islamic successors." •
Chemical synthesis of a naturally occurring compound: The oldest known instructions for deriving an inorganic compound (
sal ammoniac or
ammonium chloride) from
organic substances (such as plants, blood, and hair) by chemical means appear in the works attributed to
Jabir ibn Hayyan (written c. 850–950). •
Chess manual: The oldest known chess manual was in Arabic and dates to 840–850, written by Al-Adli ar-Rumi (800–870), a renowned Arab chess player, titled
Kitab ash-shatranj (
Book of Chess). During the
Islamic Golden Age, many works on
shatranj were written, recording for the first time the analysis of
opening moves,
game problems, the
knight's tour, and many more subjects common in modern chess books. •
Automatic crank: The non-manual crank appears in several of the hydraulic devices described by the Banū Mūsā brothers in their
Book of Ingenious Devices. These automatically operated cranks appear in several devices, two of which contain an action which approximates to that of a
crankshaft, anticipating
Al-Jazari's invention by several centuries and its first appearance in Europe by over five centuries. However, the automatic crank described by the Banu Musa would not have allowed a full rotation, but only a small modification was required to convert it to a crankshaft. •
Double-seat valve: It was invented by the
Banu Musa, and has a modern appearance in their
Book of Ingenious Devices. •
Lusterware: Lustre glazes were applied to pottery in
Mesopotamia in the 9th century; the technique soon became popular in
Persia and
Syria. Earlier uses of lustre are known. •
Hard soap: Hard toilet soap with a pleasant smell was produced in the
Middle East during the
Islamic Golden Age, when soap-making became an established industry. Recipes for soap-making are described by
Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (c. 865–925), who also gave a recipe for producing
glycerine from
olive oil. In the Middle East, soap was produced from the interaction of
fatty oils and
fats with
alkali. In
Syria, soap was produced using olive oil together with alkali and
lime. Soap was exported from Syria to other parts of the
Muslim world and to Europe. •
Mental institute: In 872,
Ahmad ibn Tulun built a
hospital in
Cairo that provided care to the insane, which included music therapy. •
Kerosene distillation: Although the Chinese made use of kerosene through extracting and purifying petroleum, the process of distilling crude oil/petroleum into kerosene, as well as other hydrocarbon compounds, was first written about in the 9th century by the Persian scholar
Rāzi (or Rhazes). In his
Kitab al-Asrar (
Book of Secrets), the physician and chemist Razi described two methods for the production of kerosene, termed
naft abyad ("white naphtha"), using an apparatus called an
alembic. •
Kerosene lamp: The first description of a simple lamp using crude mineral oil was provided by
Persian alchemist
al-Razi (Rhazes) in 9th century
Baghdad, who referred to it as the "naffatah" in his
Kitab al-Asrar (
Book of Secrets). •
Minaret: The first known minarets appeared in the early 9th century under
Abbasid rule. •
Music sequencer and
mechanical musical instrument: The origin of automatic musical instruments dates back to the 9th century, when
Persian inventors
Banū Mūsā brothers invented a
hydropowered
organ using exchangeable cylinders with pins, and also an
automatic flute playing machine using
steam power. •
Kamal: The kamal originated with
Arab navigators of the late 9th century. The invention of the kamal allowed for the earliest known
latitude sailing, and was thus the earliest step towards the use of
quantitative methods in
navigation. •
Programmable machine and
automatic flute player: The
Banū Mūsā brothers invented a
programmable automatic
flute player and which they described in their
Book of Ingenious Devices. It was the earliest programmable machine. •
Sharbat and
soft drink: In the
medieval Middle East, a variety of fruit-flavoured soft drinks were widely drunk, such as
sharbat, and were often sweetened with ingredients such as
sugar,
syrup and
honey. Other common ingredients included
lemon,
apple,
pomegranate,
tamarind,
jujube,
sumac,
musk,
mint and
ice. Middle Eastern drinks later became
popular in medieval Europe, where the word "syrup" was derived from
Arabic. •
Sine quadrant: A type of
quadrant used by medieval
Arabic astronomers, it was described by
Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī in 9th century Baghdad. •
Scimitar: The curved sword or "scimitar" was widespread throughout the
Middle East from at least the
Ottoman period, with early examples dating to
Abbasid era (9th century)
Khurasan. •
Sugar mill: Sugar mills first appeared in the
medieval Islamic world. They were first driven by
watermills, and then
windmills from the 9th and 10th centuries in what are today
Afghanistan,
Pakistan and
Iran. •
Systemic algebraic solution and
completing the square:
Al-Khwarizmi's popularizing treatise on
algebra (
The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, c. 813–833 CE) presented the first systematic solution of
linear and
quadratic equations. One of his principal achievements in algebra was his demonstration of how to solve quadratic equations by
completing the square, for which he provided geometric justifications. •
Thabit numbers: Named after
Thabit ibn Qurra •
Throttling valve: It appears for the first time in the
Banu Musa's
Book of Ingenious Devices. •
Variable structure control: Two-step level controls for fluids, a form of discontinuous
variable structure controls, was developed by the
Banu Musa brothers. •
Wind-powered gristmill: The first
wind-powered gristmills were built in the 9th and 10th centuries in what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
Tenth century • '''
Alhazen's problem''': A theorem by ibn al-Haytham solved only in 1997 by Neumann. •
Arabic numerals: The modern Arabic numeral symbols originate from Islamic
North Africa in the 10th century. A distinctive Western Arabic variant of the
Eastern Arabic numerals began to emerge around the 10th century in the
Maghreb and
Al-Andalus (sometimes called
ghubar numerals, though the term is not always accepted), which are the direct ancestor of the modern Arabic numerals used throughout the world. •
Binomial theorem: The first formulation of the binomial theorem and the table of binomial coefficient can be found in a work by
Al-Karaji, quoted by
Al-Samaw'al in his "al-Bahir". •
Cauchy-Riemann Integral:
Ibn al-Haytham gave a simple form of this. •
Experimental scientific method: Expounded and practised by
ibn al-Haytham •
Fountain pen: An early historical mention of what appears to be a reservoir pen dates back to the 10th century. According to Ali Abuzar Mari (d. 974) in his ''Kitab al-Majalis wa 'l-musayarat'', the
Fatimid caliph Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah demanded a pen that would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen that held ink in a reservoir, allowing it to be held upside-down without leaking. •
Law of cotangents: This was first given by
Ibn al-Haytham. as well as the Mesopotamian region. • '''
Pascal's triangle''': The
Persian mathematician
Al-Karaji (953–1029) wrote a now lost book which contained the first description of Pascal's triangle. •
Ruffini-Horner Algorithm: Discovered by ibn al-Haytham •
Shale oil extraction: In the 10th century, the Arab physician
Masawaih al-Mardini (Mesue the Younger) described a method of extraction of oil from "some kind of bituminous shale". • '''
Snell's law'
: The law was first accurately described by the Persian scientist Ibn Sahl at the Baghdad court in 984. In the manuscript On Burning Mirrors and Lenses'', ibn Sahl used the law to derive lens shapes that focus light with no geometric aberrations. According to
Jim al-Khalili, the law should be called ibn Sahl's law. •
Vertical-axle windmill: A small wind wheel operating an organ is described as early as the 1st century AD by
Hero of Alexandria. The first vertical-axle windmills were eventually built in
Sistan,
Persia as described by Muslim geographers. These windmills had long vertical
driveshafts with rectangle shaped blades. They may have been constructed as early as the time of the second
Rashidun caliph Umar (634-644 AD), though some argue that this account may have been a 10th-century amendment. Made of six to twelve sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind grains and draw up water, and used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries. Horizontal axle windmills of the type generally used today, however, were developed in Northwestern Europe in the 1180s. •
Double-entry bookkeeping system: Double-entry bookkeeping was pioneered in the Jewish community of the medieval Middle East. •
Hyperbolic geometry: The theorems of
Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen),
Omar Khayyám and
Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī on
quadrilaterals were the first theorems on hyperbolic geometry. •
Magnifying glass and
convex lens: A convex lens used for forming a magnified image was described in the
Book of Optics by
Ibn al-Haytham in 1021. •
Mechanical flywheel: The mechanical
flywheel, used to smooth out the delivery of power from a driving device to a driven machine and, essentially, to allow lifting water from far greater depths (up to 200 metres), was first employed by Ibn Bassal (
fl. 1038–1075), of
Al-Andalus. •
Mercuric chloride (formerly
corrosive sublimate): used to disinfect wounds. •
Steel mill: By the 11th century, much of the Islamic world had industrial steel
watermills in operation, from
Al-Andalus and
North Africa to the
Middle East and
Central Asia. •
Weight-driven clock:
Arabic engineers invented
water clocks driven by
gears and
weights in the 11th century. •
Optic chiasm: The crossing of nerve fibres, and the impact on vision that this had, was first clearly identified by Persian physician "Esmail Jorjani", who appears to be
Zayn al-Din Gorgani (1042–1137). The optic chiasm was earlier theorized by
Ibn al-Haytham in the early 11th century. •
Paper packaging: The earliest recorded use of paper for packaging dates back to 1035, when a
Persian traveler visiting markets in
Cairo noted that vegetables, spices and hardware were wrapped in paper for the customers after they were sold. •
Bridge mill: The bridge mill was a unique type of
watermill that was built as part of the
superstructure of a bridge. The earliest record of a bridge mill is from
Córdoba, Spain in the 12th century.
Thirteenth century •
Fritware: It refers to a type of pottery which was first developed in the Near East, beginning in the late 1st millennium, for which
frit was a significant ingredient. A recipe for "fritware" dating to c. 1300 AD written by Abu’l Qasim reports that the ratio of quartz to "frit-glass" to white clay is 10:1:1. This type of pottery has also been referred to as "stonepaste" and "faience" among other names. A 9th-century corpus of "proto-stonepaste" from
Baghdad has "relict glass fragments" in its fabric. •
Mercury clock: A detailed account of technology in
Islamic Spain was compiled under
Alfonso X of Castile between 1276 and 1279, which included a compartmented
mercury clock, which was influential up until the 17th century. It was described in the
Libros del saber de Astronomia, a
Spanish work from 1277 consisting of translations and paraphrases of Arabic works. • '''
Mariotte's bottle'
: The Libros del saber de Astronomia'' describes a
water clock which employs the principle of Mariotte's bottle. •
Naker: Arabic
nakers were the direct ancestors of most
timpani, brought to 13th-century
Continental Europe by
Crusaders and
Saracens.
Al Andalus (Islamic Spain) Ninth-twelfth centuries •
Inheritance of hemophilia: First proposed by
Abu Al-Zahrawi was first to record and suggest that
hemophilia was an inherited disease. •
Anesthetic sponge: Invented by al-Zahrawi and Ibn Zuhr. Used a sponge soaked with narcotic drugs and placed it on patient's face. These Muslim physicians were the first to use an anesthetic sponge. •
Lithotrite: Improved version invented by
Al-Zahrawi. •
Mercuric oxide: First synthesized by Abu al-Qasim al-Qurtubi al-Majriti (10th century). •
Migraine surgery: First performed by
al-Zahrawi (936–1013). • '''Early
Kocher's method and Walter position''':
Al-Zahrawi's
Kitab al-Tasrif described both what would later become known as "
Kocher's method" for treating a dislocated shoulder and the "Walcher position" in
obstetrics. •
Treatment of hydrocephalus: First done by
Al-Zahrawi. •
Water and weight driven mechanical clocks: By Spanish Muslim engineers sometime between 900 and 1200. According to historian Will Durant, a watch-like device was invented by
Ibn Firnas. •
Andalusian Oud: Abu l-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Nafi‘ (789–857), a prominent musician who had trained under
Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in
Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833 AD. He has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and with establishing one of the first schools of
music in
Córdoba.
Fourteenth century •
Hispano-Moresque ware: This was a style of
Islamic pottery created in Arab Spain, after the
Moors had introduced two ceramic techniques to Europe:
glazing with an
opaque white tin-glaze, and painting in metallic lusters. Hispano-Moresque ware was distinguished from the pottery of Christendom by the Islamic character of its decoration. •
Polar-axis sundial: Early sundials were nodus-based with straight hour-lines, indicating unequal hours (also called temporary hours) that varied with the seasons, since every day was divided into twelve equal segments; thus, hours were shorter in winter and longer in summer. The idea of using hours of equal time length throughout the year was the innovation of
Abu'l-Hasan Ibn al-Shatir in 1371, based on earlier developments in
trigonometry by
Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albategni). Ibn al-Shatir was aware that "using a
gnomon that is parallel to the Earth's axis will produce sundials whose hour lines indicate equal hours on any day of the year." His sundial is the oldest polar-axis sundial still in existence. The concept later appeared in Western sundials from at least 1446.
Sultanates Twelfth century •
Blood measurement device: Created by
Al-Jazari Thirteenth century •
Various automatons:
Al-Jazari's inventions included automaton peacocks, a hand-washing automaton, and a musical band of automatons. •
Candle clock with dial and
fastening mechanism: The earliest reference of the candle clock is described in a Chinese poem by You Jiangu (AD 520), However the most sophisticated candle clocks known, were those of
Al-Jazari in 1206. It included a
dial to display the time. •
Crank-slider:
Ismail al-Jazari's water pump employed the first known
crank-slider mechanism. •
Cotton gin with worm gear: The
worm gear roller gin was invented in the
Delhi Sultanate during the 13th to 14th centuries. •
Design and construction methods: English technology historian
Donald Hill wrote, "We see for the first time in al-Jazari's work several concepts important for both design and construction: the
lamination of timber to minimize warping, the
static balancing of wheels, the use of wooden
templates (a kind of pattern), the use of
paper models to establish designs, the
calibration of orifices, the grinding of the seats and plugs of valves together with
emery powder to obtain a watertight fit, and the
casting of metals in closed
mold boxes with
sand." •
Draw bar: The draw bar was applied to sugar-milling, with evidence of its use at
Delhi in the
Mughal Empire by 1540, but possibly dating back several centuries earlier to the
Delhi Sultanate. •
Minimising intermittence: The concept of minimising the intermittence is first implied in one of
Al-Jazari's
saqiya devices, which was to maximise the efficiency of the saqiya. •
Programmable automaton and
drum machine: The earliest programmable
automata, and the first programmable drum machine, were invented by
Al-Jazari, and described in
The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, written in 1206. His programmable musical device featured four automaton musicians, including two drummers, that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties. It was a programmable drum machine where pegs (
cams) bump into little levers that operated the percussion. The drummers could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns if the pegs were moved around. •
Tusi couple: The couple was first proposed by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in his 1247 Tahrir al-Majisti (Commentary on the Almagest) as a solution for the latitudinal motion of the inferior planets. The Tusi couple is explicitly two circles of radii x and 2x in which the circle with the smaller radii rotates inside the Bigger circle. The oscillatory motion be produced by the combined uniform circular motions of two identical circles, one riding on the circumference of the other. •
Griot: The griot musical tradition originates from the Islamic
Mali Empire, where the first professional griot was
Balla Fasséké. •
Sitar: According to various sources, the sitar was invented by
Amir Khusrow, a famous
Sufi inventor, poet, and pioneer of
Khyal,
Tarana and
Qawwali, in the
Delhi Sultanate. Others say that the instrument was brought from Iran and modified for the tastes of the rulers of the Delhi Sultanate and
Mughal Empire.
Fifteenth century •
Coffee: Although there are early historical accounts of coffee consumption (as
qahwa) in Ethiopia, it is not clear whether it was "used" as a beverage. The earliest historical evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the 15th century, in the
Sufi monasteries of the
Yemen in southern Arabia. From
Mocha, coffee spread to
Egypt and North Africa, and by the 16th century, it had reached the rest of the Middle East,
Persia and
Turkey. From the
Muslim world, coffee drinking spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, and coffee plants were transported by the Dutch to the
East Indies and to the Americas.
Ottoman Empire Fifteenth century •
Iznik pottery: Produced in
Ottoman Turkey as early as the 15th century AD. It consists of a body,
slip, and glaze, where the body and glaze are "quartz-frit." The "frits" in both cases "are unusual in that they contain
lead oxide as well as
soda"; the lead oxide would help reduce the
thermal expansion coefficient of the ceramic. Microscopic analysis reveals that the material that has been labeled "frit" is "interstitial glass" which serves to connect the quartz particles. •
Standing army with firearms: The Ottoman military's regularized use of firearms proceeded ahead of the pace of their European counterparts. The
Janissaries had been an infantry bodyguard using bows and arrows. During the rule of
Sultan Mehmed II they were drilled with firearms and became "the first standing infantry force equipped with firearms in the world."
Sixteenth century •
Firearm kneeling position: At the
Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Janissaries equipped with 2000
tüfenks (usually translated as musket) "formed nine consecutive rows and they fired their weapons row by row," in a "kneeling or standing position without the need for additional support or rest." The Chinese later adopted the Ottoman kneeling position for firing. •
Marching band and military band: The marching band and military band both have their origins in the
Ottoman military band, performed by the
Janissary since the 16th century. •
Matchlock volley fire: Volley fire with matchlocks was first implemented in 1526 when the Ottoman
Janissaries utilized it during the
Battle of Mohács. •
Parallel rulers: Invented by
Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf and used at the
Constantinople Observatory of Taqi ad-Din (1577–1580). •
Practical impulse steam turbine: A practical impulse
steam turbine was first described in 1551 by
Taqi al-Din, a
philosopher,
astronomer and
engineer in 16th century
Ottoman Egypt, who described a method for rotating a
spit by means of a jet of steam playing on rotary vanes around the periphery of a wheel. A similar device for rotating a spit was also later described by
John Wilkins in 1648. •
Steam jack: A
steam-powered roasting jack was first described by the Ottoman polymath and engineer
Taqi al-Din in his
Al-Turuq al-samiyya fi al-alat al-ruhaniyya (
The Sublime Methods of Spiritual Machines), in 1551 CE (959 AH). It was an impulse
steam turbine with practical applications as a prime mover for rotating a
spit, predating
Giovanni Branca's later impulse steam turbine from 1629.
Safavid dynasty Fifteenth century •
Classical Oriental carpet: By the late fifteenth century, the design of
Persian carpets changed considerably. Large-format medallions appeared, ornaments began to show elaborate curvilinear designs. Large spirals and tendrils, floral ornaments, depictions of flowers and animals, were often mirrored along the long or short axis of the carpet to obtain harmony and rhythm. The earlier "kufic" border design was replaced by tendrils and
arabesques. All these patterns required a more elaborate system of weaving, as compared to weaving straight, rectilinear lines. Likewise, they require artists to create the design, weavers to execute them on the loom, and an efficient way to communicate the artist's ideas to the weaver. Today this is achieved by a template, termed cartoon (Ford, 1981, p. 170). How Safavid manufacturers achieved this, technically, is currently unknown. The result of their work, however, was what
Kurt Erdmann termed the "carpet design revolution". Apparently, the new designs were developed first by miniature painters, as they started to appear in book illuminations and on book covers as early as in the fifteenth century. This marks the first time when the "classical" design of Islamic rugs was established.
Mughal Empire Sixteenth century •
Hookah or
water pipe: according to Cyril Elgood (PP.41, 110), the physician Irfan Shaikh, at the court of the Mughal emperor
Akbar I (15421605) invented the Hookah or water pipe used most commonly for smoking
tobacco. •
Metal cylinder rocket: In the 16th century,
Akbar was the first to initiate and use metal cylinder rockets known as
bans, particularly against
war elephants, during the Battle of Sanbal. •
Multi-barrel matchlock volley gun:
Fathullah Shirazi (c. 1582), a Persian polymath and mechanical engineer who worked for
Akbar, developed an early multi-shot gun. Shirazi's gun had multiple
gun barrels that fired
hand cannons loaded with gunpowder. It may be considered a version of a volley gun. One such gun he developed was a seventeen-barrelled cannon fired with a
matchlock.
Seventeenth century •
Roller mill: Sugar rolling mills first appeared in the
Mughal Empire, using the principle of rollers as well as
worm gearing, by the 17th century. •
Rocket artillery - The first true rocket artillery was developed by
Tipu Sultan and was notably in use during the
Anglo-Mysore Wars. == See also ==