Rediscovering Arabic Science

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Rediscovering Arabic Science



You have to hand it to Ahmed Djebbar: The science historian certainly knows how to draw a crowd. As we circulate among the astrolabes, maps and hydraulic models of an eye-opening Paris exhibition on medieval Arabic science, curious museum-goers gather around us.

�Did you know that the Egyptian doctor Ibn al-Nafis recognized that the lungs purify blood in the 13th century, nearly 350 years before the Europeans?� he asks, standing in front of an anatomical drawing of the human body. �Or that the Arabs treated the mentally ill with music therapy as early as the ninth century?�

Examining a case of rare manuscripts, the dapper Lille University professor launches into a mini-lecture before the rapt group. The 13th-century Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, the author of one of the yellowing Arabic-language texts, upended the geocentric Greek view of the universe, Djebbar explains, by declaring Ptolemy�s model of planetary motion flawed and creating his own more accurate, but still Earth-centered, version. Three centuries later, the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus borrowed al-Tusi�s model to make the shocking proposition that the Earth revolves around the sun. �Al-Tusi made his observations without ctelescopes or even glasses,� says Djebbar, removing his own spectacles and waving them theatrically in the air. �Even though the Arabs possessed the knowledge to make lenses, they probably thought it was an idiotic idea. God made us like this; why hang something on our noses to see better?� he jokes, placing his glasses back on his nose with a flourish. His audience erupts into laughter as Djebbar, who was curator of �The Golden Age of Arabic Sciences��the Paris exhibition, which ran from October 2005 through March 2006 at the Arab World Institute�tries to quiet them down.