Eminent Arab Scientists (Part 2)

Eminent Arab Scientists (Part 2) 

Al-Zaharwi

Abu al Qasim Khalaf (936–1013), popularly known as al-Zahrawi, Latinised as Albucasis, was an Arab Andalusian physician, surgeon and chemist. Al-Zahrawi was born in the city of Azahara, 8 kilometers northwest of Cordoba, Andalusia.

Considered to be the greatest surgeon of the Middle Ages, he has been referred to as the “father of modern surgery”.

Al-Zahrawi’s pioneering contributions to the field of surgical procedures and instruments had an enormous impact in the East and West well into the modern period, where some of his discoveries are still applied in medicine to this day.

Scientific achievements:

1. He was the first person to use catgut for internal stitching and this method is still practiced in modern surgery. The catgut appears to be the only natural substance capable of dissolving and being acceptable by the body.

2. Al-Zahrawi also pioneered neurosurgery and neurological diagnosis. He is known to have performed surgical treatments of head injuries, skull fractures, spinal injuries, hydrocephalus, subdural effusions and headache.

3. He was the first physician to identify the hereditary nature of haemophilia.

4. Al-Zahrawi was the first to describe a surgical procedure for ligating the temporal artery for migraine, also almost 600 years before Pare who recorded that he had ligated his own temporal artery for headache that conforms to current descriptions of migraine.

5. The first clinical description of an operative procedure for hydrocephalus was given by Al-Zahrawi who clearly describes the evacuation of superficial intracranial fluid in hydrocephalic children.

6. He is also credited to be the first person to use “Kocher’s method” for treating a dislocated shoulder.The procedure should have been named after his name not Kocher’s.

7. Same is true for “Walcher position” in obstetrics.

8. He also was the first to describe an abdominal pregnancy, a subtype of ectopic pregnancy that in those days was a fatal affliction.

9. Al-Zahrawi was also the first physician to discover the root cause of paralysis.

10. He also developed surgical devices for Caesarean sections and cataract surgeries.

11. Al-Zahrawi specialized in curing disease by cauterization.

12. He was also the first to illustrate the various cannulae and the first to treat a wart with an iron tube and caustic metal as a boring instrument.

13. In urology, al-Zahrawi wrote about taking stones out of the bladder. By inventing a new instrument, an early form of the lithotrite which he called “Michaab”, he was able to crush the stone inside the bladder without the need for a surgical incision.

14. He was known to use gold and silver wires to ligate loosened teeth, and has been credited as the first to use replantation in the history of dentistry.

15. In pharmacy and pharmacology, Al-Zahrawi pioneered the preparation of medicines by sublimation and distillation.

16. Al-Zahrawi introduced over 200 surgical instruments, which include, among others, different kinds of scalpels, retractors, curettes, pincers, specula, and also instruments designed for his favoured techniques of cauterization and ligature. He also invented hooks with a double tip for use in surgery.

17. Al-Zahrawi treated a slave girl who had cut her own throat in a suicide attempt. He sewed up the wound and the girl recovered, thereby proving that an incision in the larynx could heal.

Salient facts of life:

He lived most of his life in Cordoba. He studied, taught and practiced medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013.

He was a court physician to the Andalusian caliph Al-Hakam II. The street in Córdoba where he lived is named in his honor as “Calle Albucasis”. On this street he lived in house no. 6, which is preserved today by the Spanish Tourist Board with a bronze plaque (awarded in January 1977) which reads: “This was the house where Al-Zahrawi lived.”

Books:

Al-Zahrawi’s principal work is the Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices. The surgery chapter of this work was later translated into Latin, attaining popularity and becoming the standard textbook in Europe for the next five hundred years.

Kitāb al-Taṣrīf was completed in the year 1000 AD. It covered a broad range of medical topics, including surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition, dentistry, childbirth, and pathology. The first volume in the encyclopedia is concerned with general principles of medicine, the second with pathology, while much of the rest discuss topics regarding pharmacology and drugs. The last treatise and the most celebrated one is about surgery. Al-Zahrawi stated that he chose to discuss surgery in the last volume because surgery is the highest form of medicine, and one must not practice it until he becomes well-acquainted with all other branches of medicine.

Not always properly credited, modern evaluation of Kitab al-Tasrif manuscript has revealed on early descriptions of some medical procedures that were ascribed to later physicians.

The 30th and last volume of the Kitab al-Tasrif is titled “On Surgery and Instruments”. It was without a doubt his most important work and the one which established his authority in Europe for centuries to come. On Surgery and Instruments is the first illustrated surgical guide ever written. Its contents and descriptions has contributed in many technological innovations in medicine, notably which tools to use in specific surgeries. In his book, al-Zahrawi draws diagrams of each tool used in different procedures to clarify how to carry out the steps of each treatment.

The book was translated into Latin in the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona. It soon found popularity in Europe and became a standard text in all major Medical universities like those of Salerno and Montpellier. It remained the primary source on surgery in Europe for the next 500 years, and as the historian of medicine, Arturo Castiglioni, has put it: “Al-Zahrawi’s treatise in surgery held the same authority as did the Canon of Avicenna in medicine”.

 

Al Jazari

              Badi uz Zaman al-Jazarī (1136–1206 AD) was a Muslim polymath a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, artisan, artist and mathematician from the Artuqid Dynasty of Jazira in Mesopotamia. Al-Jazari was born in the area of Upper Mesopotamia in 1136. Like his father before him, he served as chief engineer.

He has been described as the “father of robotics and modern day engineering”.       

Scientific achievements:

Robotics:

1. One of al-Jazari’s prominent inventions was a waitress that could serve water, tea or drinks. The drink was stored in a tank with a reservoir from where the drink drips into a bucket and, after seven minutes, into a cup, after which the waitress appears out of an automatic door serving the drink.

2. He also invented a hand washing automaton incorporating a flush mechanism now used in modern flush toilets. 

3. He also created automatic doors as part of one of his elaborate water clocks, and invented water wheels with cams on their axle used to operate his automatic machines. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the Italian Renaissance inventor Leonardo da Vinci may have been influenced by the classic automata of al-Jazari. 

4. Al-Jazari built automated moving peacocks driven by hydropower. Al-Jazari’s “peacock fountain” was a more sophisticated hand washing device featuring robotic servants which offer soap and towels.

5. He also created a musical automaton, which was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties.

     Other inventions:

1. A camshaft, a shaft to which cams are attached, was introduced in 1206 by al-Jazari, who employed them in his automata, water clocks (such as the candle clock) and water-raising machines. The cam and camshaft first appeared in European mechanisms two centuries later. 

2. The crankshaft described by al-Jazari transforms continuous rotary motion into a linear reciprocating motion, and is central to modern machinery such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine and automatic controls.
3. 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.

4. He also invented a method for controlling the speed of rotation of a wheel using an escapement mechanism. 

5. He was the first person to introduce segmental gears.

6. Al-Jazari invented five machines for raising water, as well as watermills and water wheels.

7. He also presented the first known use of a true suction pipe (which sucks fluids into a partial vacuum) in a pump. 

8. He was also the inventor of the conversion of rotary to reciprocating motion via the crank-connecting rod mechanism.

9. Al-Jazari developed the earliest water supply system to be driven by gears and hydropower, which was built in 13th century Damascus to supply water to its mosques and Bimaristan hospitals. 

10. Al-Jazari constructed a variety of water clocks and candle clocks. These included a portable water-powered scribe clock, which was a meter high and half a meter wide.

11. He also invented monumental water-powered astronomical clocks which displayed moving models of the Sun, Moon, and stars. His largest astronomical clock was the “castle clock”, which was a complex device that was about 11 feet (3.4 m) high, and had multiple functions besides timekeeping. It had a pointer in the shape of the crescent moon which travelled across the top of a gateway. Another feature of the device was five robotic musicians who automatically played music when moved by levers operated by a hidden camshaft attached to a water wheel.

Books:

He is best known for writing “The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices” in 1206, where he described 50 mechanical devices, along with instructions on how to construct them.

 

Ibn al-Haytham

                Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (965 AD–1040 AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, and physicist from present-day Iraq.

He is universally acknowledged as  the“the father of modern optics” and as world’s “first true scientist”.

He is known as Alhazen in the West. His most influential work is titled Kitāb al-Manāẓir, written during 1011–1021, which survived in a Latin edition. His works were frequently cited during the scientific revolution by Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Christiaan Huygens, and Galileo Galilei.

Scientific achievements:

1. Ibn al-Haytham believed that a hypothesis must be supported by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical reasoning. So he described scientific method five centuries before Western scientists. Due to this reason, he is accepted as the world’s “first true scientist”.

2. He was the first person to correctly explain the theory of vision. He showed through experiment that light travels in straight lines, and carried out various experiments with lenses and mirrors to study refraction and reflection. His analyses of reflection and refraction considered the vertical and horizontal components of light rays separately.

3. He was the first physicist to give complete statement of the law of reflection. He was the first person to state that the incident ray, the reflected ray, and the normal to the surface ray, all lie in the same plane perpendicular to reflecting plane.

4. He also stated the principle of least time for refraction. Unfortunately, many centuries later, credit was given to a French mathematician Pierre de Fermat  and it is now known as Fermat’s principle.

5. He was also the first person to give the concept that the vision occurs in the brain, pointing to observations that it is subjective and affected by personal experience.

6. In astronomy, he described a new, geometry-based planetary model, describing the motions of the planets in terms of spherical geometry, infinitesimal geometry and trigonometry.

Salient facts of life:

                Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) was born c. 965 to a family of Arab or Persian origin in Basra, Iraq.

His initial influences were in the study of religion and service to the community. But later on, he focused on the study of mathematics and science. He held a position with the title vizier in his native Basra, and made a name for himself on his knowledge of applied mathematics.

As he claimed to be able to regulate the flooding of the Nile, he was invited to meet the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim in order to realise a hydraulic project at Aswan. However, Ibn al-Haytham was forced to concede the impracticability of his project.

Upon his return to Cairo, he was given an administrative post. Caliph al-Hakim was unhappy with him , and he was forced into hiding until the caliph’s death in 1021, after which his confiscated possessions were returned to him. During this time of hiding, he wrote his influential Book of Optics. Alhazen continued to live in Cairo, in the neighborhood of the famous University of al-Azhar, and lived from the proceeds of his literary production  until his death.

Books:

Alhazen’s most famous work is his seven-volume treatise on optics Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics), written from 1011 to 1021. In it, Ibn al-Haytham was the first to explain that vision occurs when light reflects from an object and then passes to one’s eyes, and to argue that vision occurs in the brain, pointing to observations that it is subjective and affected by personal experience. It was translated into Latin the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th century. This work enjoyed a great reputation during the Middle Ages.

Comments of a famous Professor of visual perception:

Ian P. Howard argued in a 1996 Perception article that Alhazen should be credited with many discoveries and theories previously attributed to Western Europeans writing centuries later. For example, he described what became in the 19th century Hering’s law of equal innervation. He wrote a description of vertical horopters 600 years before Aguilonius that is actually closer to the modern definition than Aguilonius’s—and his work on binocular disparity was repeated by Panum in 1858.

 

Abbas ibn Firnas

 

 

Abbas ibn Firnas (809/810 – 887 A.D.)was a Berber Andalusian polymathan inventor, astronomer, physicist, chemist, mathematician engineer, Andalusi musician, and Arabic-language poet. He lived in Córdoba.

Scientific achievements:

1. He is known to be the first person to have experimented with any form of flight.

2. He constructed a device which indicated the motion of the planets and stars in the Universe.

3. In addition, ibn Firnas came up with a procedure to manufacture colourless glass and made magnifying lenses for reading, which were known as reading stones.

4. He also devised a chain of things that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars, and developed a process for cutting rock crystal.

5. He also designed the al-Maqata, a water clock.

Algerian historian Ahmad al-Maqqari (d. 1632) described his attempts to fly in these words:

“Among other very curious experiments which he made, one is his trying to fly. He covered himself with feathers for the purpose, attached a couple of wings to his body, and, getting on an eminence, flung himself down into the air, when according to the testimony of several trustworthy writers who witnessed the performance, he flew a considerable distance, as if he had been a bird, but, in alighting again on the place whence he had started, his back was very much hurt, for not knowing that birds when they alight come down upon their tails, he forgot to provide himself with one.”

Legacy

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