Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

Aspects of Islamic Scientific Tradition • 15of them had been massacred. Abd al-Rahman I was the sole survivorfrom the ruling family; he escaped to Spain, where he establishedUmayyad rule (755–1031).Abu’l Abbas remained at war for the entire period of hiscaliphate and on his death in 753, his brother, Abu Ja‘far, wasproclaimed Caliph as al-Mansur (the victorious). In 762, al-Mansurdecided to move his capital to a safer place. He himself supervisedthe process of the selection of its location; the choice fell for a smalland ancient town, which was to become the fabled capital of Abbasidrule for the next five hundred years: Baghdad. Spanning both banksof the river Tigris, the new capital was designed as a circular citywith sixteen gates. Its construction began on July 30, 762, a datedetermined by astrologers and engineers, among whom was theaforementioned al-Fazari. The city was officially called Madinat al-Salam, the city of peace.Beginning with the construction of Baghdad we can trace thedevelopments in the scientific tradition in Islamic civilization withmore confidence; our source material becomes more reliable andthere is an exponential increase in available texts.In order to understand the nature of science in Islamiccivilization at this stage of its development, we proceed with anoutline of the various sciences as they emerged during the secondhalf of the eighth century.The Initial FloweringBy the time of the famous alchemist Jabir bin Hayyan, science inIslamic civilization had become considerably well established. Jabiriancorpus is so extensive and varied that some scholars have expresseddoubts about its authorship by a single person (Kraus 1991). Thesehighly sophisticated works, dealing with a vast range of subjects, wereto leave a legacy that continued to influence science and discourseon science well into the fifteenth century. Jabir’s writings deal withthe theory and practice of chemical processes and procedures,classification of substances, astrology, cosmology, theurgy, medicine,alchemy, music, magic, pharmacology, and several other disciplines.What provides an internal cohesion to this corpus is the overall