Mathematics In An Islam World
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Mathematics has often been referred to as a different world of language that explains every aspect of the universe. There is knowledge implicit in language itself. When we express something like “Monday is eating”, we know instantly that the statement does not hold because our prior knowledge tells us that Monday is a day of the week. Similarly when we express in mathematics “2*2 = 22”, we know from the multiplication tables learnt by a student that it is not true. It has already been accepted that “2*2=4”. Similar observations can be made about different branches of sciences that beget several assumptions and propositions, which finally lead to the inferences, and even further propositions. All these point towards the core problem of acceptance without questioning. However, if we begin to question everything we might not develop anything. Assumptions are sometimes essential to understand the world. This is the very limitation of perception — it needs a base to build a structure and is the base is questioned repeatedly then the structure breaks and all we may have around us will be a wreckage of confused thoughts and ideas. Thus, “works that follow” are essential to show us a way or throw a light on the direction or path of thought flow and development of ideas. Unless the base is built up one cannot move further and try to bring about alterations. Following history we find an interesting development, taking place in this respect within the Arab world. While the European nations referred this time period as the dark ages, it was the ginning of a phase of knowledge and cultural development non-European nations like Middle-East countries and also India.
It was a cherished practice of the European scholars that they tend to down play other civilizations and always projected Europe as the father of modern human civilization. To them Greece and Rome were the places where the modern science first took its steps and there after it spread all over the world. With the descending of Greek and Roman civilization following to the attacks of the so called barbarians like Vandals, Hun and others, the world passed under the darkness of ignorance and it was the renaissance that once again uplifted the world and initiated a practice of modern arts, science and literature and obviously that through the European messengers. A close analysis of the European scholars theory regarding the history clearly proves that it’s a systematic suppression of the facts and contribution of the other civilizations to the human advancement, done with a motive to prove the European supremacy over the other kinds and more likely to facilitate their rule over others. It is a known fact that Christian dominated Europe never looked friendly to the Islamic world mainly the Middle East. The European disliking towards the Islamic world dates back to history and owes its origins to the crusades. Following the advent of the gunpowder and a sudden improvement in terms of military supremacy the Europeans emerged as the prime global force and were quick to respond in suppressing the Islamic contribution to the modern world. The Europeans referred the time period preceding the renaissance as Middle Ages and tagged the period with the term dark era when human civilization experienced a recession and actually moved backward to embrace a reign of anarchy that disgraced human culture, promoted witch craft over science and almost passed the human achievements till then into oblivion. The Europeans termed this era as dark ages when everything moved backward. The Byzantine region was known as �the Second Rome’ a city that preserved the Greco Roman culture and transmitted it to the west while it occupied the barbarian lands. Not only did it turn out to be the center of Christianity but also the center of trading world. According to the remarks of Constantinople, the civilization of Western Europe flourished on the basis of the will of the Byzantine Empire to survive. The middle ages were miserable for the Europeans who hardly knew how to read and write. There were little chance of improvement of conditions and the people in Europe merely fell back on the religion of Christianity to find solace. However the term dark ages does not apply for the people in other parts of the world. The Middle East nations tried their best to develop works of ancient Greece and made fast progress in the arena of mathematics and science although not recognized by Europe.
Islamic mathematics is the term assigned to the mathematics, which took birth during 622 to 1600 in the Islamic world. Different ethnic groups and religions spoke in Arabic at that time and the scientists were mostly Muslims. The main origin of Islamic Mathematics was in Iran and Iraq but it later extended towards Turkey, North Africa, Spain and even India. The caliphate or the Arab or Islamic caliphate encouraged the growth of Islamic science and mathematics and helped it grow. The subjects established themselves in the regions of Middle East, Central Asia, Sicily, North Africa and also in France and India to some extent during the 8th century. An Arab did not necessarily write the Islamic texts written in Arabic always. This language was used as the language of scholars to write almost similar to the case of Latin in medieval Europe. Many of the Islamic scientists were Persian in terms of origin. The first century of the Islamic Arab nations witnessed almost no recognition and landmark success in the fields of science and mathematics. This is because the Arab who had newly conquered an empire did not develop any intellectual force or power till then and the relevant research had faded in the rest of the world. Research in to these fields enhanced during the second half of eight century when there occurred a cultural awakening among the Islamic nation. (Boyer, 1999, 227) It was during this period that Muslim caliph Abbasid caliph al-Mamon declared to have met Aristotle in his dreams and as a result he asked for all Greek texts to be translated to Arabic and the historians were grateful to this act because several Greek works have survived. These works included Amalgest by Ptolemy, Elements by Euclid and also books written by Archimedes, Apollonius, etc. The Byzantine Empire decided to be given to the Muslims in exchange for treaties. They had an uneasy peace in their relation. (Boyer, 1991, 234) Therefore the mathematics of Greek, India and Mesopotamia contributed towards the initial development of Mathematics in Islamic empire. The works of the famous Greek writers were all incorporated in mathematics. India had contributed to a significant extent in terms of introducing the decimal in the Indo-Arabic number system. This is also known as Hindu numerals (Berggren, 2007, 526). The translations done from Sanskrit contributed