During the Golden Age of Islam (seventh through seventeenth centuries A.D.), Muslim philosophers and poets, artists and scientists, princes and laborers created a unique culture that has influenced societies on every continent. This book offers a fully illustrated, highly accessible introduction to an important aspect of that culture—the scientific achievements of medieval Islam.

Howard Turner opens with a historical overview of the spread of Islamic civilization from the Arabian peninsula eastward to India and westward across northern Africa into Spain. He describes how a passion for knowledge led the Muslims during their centuries of empire-building to assimilate and expand the scientific knowledge of older cultures, including those of Greece, India, and China. He explores medieval Islamic accomplishments in cosmology, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, geography, medicine, natural sciences, alchemy, and optics. He also indicates the ways in which Muslim scientific achievement influenced the advance of science in the Western world from the Renaissance to the modern era. This survey of historic Muslim scientific achievements offers students and general readers a window into one of the world's great cultures, one which is experiencing a remarkable resurgence as a religious, political, and social force in our own time.

During the Middle Ages, a thriving center for learning and research was Muslim Spain, where students gathered to consult Arabic manuscripts of earlier scientific works and study with famous teachers. One of these teachers was Sa'id al-Andalusi, who in 1068 wrote Kitab Tabaqat al-'Umam, or "Book of the Categories of Nations," which recorded the contributions to science of all known nations. Today, it is one of few surviving medieval Spanish Muslim texts, and this is its first English translation.

Science ('ulum), as used by Sa'id and other scholars of that period, is a broad term covering virtually all aspects of human knowledge. After initial discussions of the categories of nations that did or did not cultivate science, Sa'id details the specific contribution of nine nations or peoples-India, Persia, Chaldea, Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Arab Orient, al-Andalus, and the Hebrews. He includes the names of many individual scientists and scholars and describes their various contributions to knowledge, making his book a significant work of reference as well as history.

Modern scholarship has exposed the intrinsic importance of medieval science and confirmed its role in preserving and transmitting Greek and Arabic achievements. This Source Book offers a rare opportunity to explore more than ten centuries of European scientific thought. In it are approximately 190 selections by about 85 authors, most of them from the Latin West. Nearly half of the selections appear here for the first time in any vernacular translation.

The readings, a number of them complete treatises, have been chosen to represent “science” in a medieval rather than a modern sense. Thus, insofar as they are relevant to medieval science, selections have been drawn from works on alchemy, astrology, logic, and theology. Most of the book, however, reflects medieval understanding of, and achievements in, the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences. Critical commentary and annotation accompany the selections. An appendix contains brief biographies of all authors.

This book will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars in the history of science.