Lost Islamic History

[Leader]

A dedicated thread for lost Islamic history, or little known facts about Islamic history.

credit to Lost Islamic History | Bringing back Islamic History

facebook page: Lost Islamic History | Facebook

 

[Leader]

The Malé Friday Mosque, the oldest mosque in the Maldives. It was built in 1658 and is mostly constructed out of coral stone. — in Male, Maldives.

 

[Leader]

This 62 meter tall minaret was built on the banks of the Hari River 1190s. Surat Maryam is inscribed on its sides in blue tile.


The Minaret of Jam, Afghanistan | Facebook

 

[Leader]

In the 1300s, the Chinese Hongwu Emperor wrote the "Hundred-word Eulogy", which praised the characteristics of the Prophet Muhammad (S). Copies of it (like this one) were distributed to mosques throughout China. Translation: Since the creation of the universe God had already appointed his great faith-preaching man, From the West he was born, And received the holy scripture And book made of 30 parts (Juz) To guide all creations, Master of all rulers, Leader of the holy ones, With support from the Heavens, To protect his nation, With five daily prayers, Silently hoping for peace, His heart directed towards Allah, Giving power to the poor, Saving them from calamity, Seeing through the Unseen, Pulling the souls and the spirits away from all wrongdoings, Mercy to the world, Transversing to the ancient, Majestic path vanquished away all evil, His religion Pure and True, Muhammad, The Noble High One.

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[Leader]

5 Muslim Inventions That Changed The World

Coffee
About 1,600,000,000 cups of coffee are consumed every day around the world. Billions of people rely on it as part of their daily routines. And yet, very few people are aware of the Muslim origins of this ubiquitous drink.

According to the historical record, in the 1400s coffee became a very popular drink among Muslims in Yemen, in the southern Arabian Peninsula. Legend goes that a shepherd (some say in Yemen, some say in Ethiopia) noticed that his goats became very energetic and jumpy when they ate beans from a particular tree. He had the courage to try them himself, noticing they gave him an energy boost. Over time, the tradition of roasting the beans and immersing them in water to create a sour yet powerful drink developed, and thus, coffee was born.

Regardless of whether or not the story of the shepherd ever really happened, coffee found its way from the highlands of Yemen to the rest of the Ottoman Empire, the premier Muslim empire of the 15th century. Coffeehouses specializing in the new drink began to spring up in all the major cities of the Muslim world: Cairo, Istanbul, Damascus, Baghdad. From the Muslim world, the drink found its way into Europe through the great merchant city of Venice. Although it was at first denounced as the “Muslim drink” by Catholic authorities, coffee became a part of European culture. The coffeehouses of the 1600s was where philosophers met and discussed issues such as the rights of man, the role of government, and democracy. These discussions over coffee spawned what became the Enlightenment, one of the most powerful intellectual movements of the modern world.

From a Yemeni/Ethiopian shepherd to shaping European political thought to over 1 billion cups per day, this Muslim innovation is one of the most important inventions of human history.

Algebra
While many secondary school students struggling through math classes may not particularly appreciate the importance of algebra, it is one of the most important contributions of the Muslim Golden Age to the modern world. It was developed by the great scientist and mathematician, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khawarizmi, who lived from 780 to 850 in Persia and Iraq.

In his monumental book, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-l-muqābala (English: The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing), he set forth the basic principles of algebraic equations. The name of the book itself contains the word “al-jabr”, meaning “completion”, from which the Latin word algebra is derived. In the book, al-Khawarizmi explains how to use algebraic equations with unknown variables to solve real-world problems such as zakat calculation and inheritance division. A unique aspect of his reasoning for developing algebra is the desire to make calculations mandated by Islamic law easier to complete in a world without calculators and computers.

Al-Khawarizimi’s books were translated into Latin in Europe in the 1000s and 1100s, where he was known as Algoritmi (the word algorithm is based on his name and his mathematical works). Without his work in developing algebra, modern practical applications of math, such as engineering, would not be possible. His works were used as math textbooks in European universities for hundreds of years after his death.

Degree-Granting Universities
Speaking of universities, that is also an invention made possible by the Muslim world. Early on in Islamic history, mosques doubled as schools. The same people who led prayers would teach groups of students about Islamic sciences such as Quran, fiqh (jurisprudence), and hadith. As the Muslim world grew however, there needed to be formal institutions, known as madrasas, dedicated to the education of students.

The first formal madrasa was al-Karaouine, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri in Fes, Morocco. Her school attracted some of the leading scholars of North Africa, as well as the land’s brightest students. At al-Karaouine, students were taught by teachers for a number of years in a variety of subjects ranging from secular to religious sciences. At the end of the program, if the teachers deemed their students qualified, they would grant them a certificate known as an ijaza, which recognizes that the student understood the material and is now qualified to teach it.

These first degree-granting educational institutes quickly spread throughout the Muslim world. Al-Azhar University was founded in Cairo in 970, and in the 1000s, the Seljuks established dozens of madrasas throughout the Middle East. The concept of institutes that grant certificates of completion (degrees) spread into Europe through Muslim Spain, where European students would travel to study. The Universities of Bologna in Italy and Oxford in England were founded in the 11th and 12th centuries and continued the Muslim tradition of granting degrees to students who deserved them, and using it as a judge of a person’s qualifications in a particular subject.

Military Marching Bands

Many students who attended high schools and universities in the Western world are familiar with the marching band. Made up of a group of a few hundred musicians, a band marches onto a field during an sporting event to entertain the audience and cheer on the players. These school marching bands developed from the use of marching military bands during the Gunpowder Age in Europe that were designed to encourage soldiers during battle. This tradition has its origins in the Ottoman mehter bands of the 1300s that helped make the Ottoman army one of the most powerful in the world.

As part of the elite Janissary corps of the Ottoman Empire, the mehter band’s purpose was to play loud music that would frighten enemies and encourage allies. Using enormous drums and clashing cymbals, the sounds created by a mehter band could stretch for miles. During the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans throughout the 14th -16th centuries, mehter bands accompanied the fearsome Ottoman armies, who seemed almost invincible even in the face of huge European alliances.

Eventually, Christian Europe also caught on to the use of military bands to frighten enemies. Legend has it that after the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, the retreating Ottoman army left behind dozens of musical instruments, which the Austrians collected, studied, and put to their own use. Armies all over Europe soon began implementing marching military bands, revolutionizing the way war was fought in Europe for centuries.

Cameras
It’s hard to imagine a world without photography. Billion dollar companies like Instagram and Canon are based on the idea of capturing light from a scene, creating an image from it, and reproducing that image. But doing so is impossible without the trailblazing work of the 11th century Muslim scientist, Ibn al-Haytham, who developed the field of optics and described how the first cameras work.

Working in the imperial city of Cairo in the early 1000s, Ibn al-Haytham was one of the greatest scientists of all time. To regulate scientific advancements, he developed the scientific method, the basic process by which all scientific research is conducted. When he was put under house arrest by the Fatimid ruler al-Hakim, he had the time and ability to study how light works. His research partially focused on how the pinhole camera worked. Ibn al-Haytham was the first scientist to realize that when a tiny hole is put onto the side of a lightproof box, rays of light from the outside are projected through that pinhole into the box and onto the back wall of it. He realized that the smaller the pinhole (aperture), the sharper the image quality, giving him the ability to build cameras that were incredibly accurate and sharp when capturing an image.

Ibn al-Haytham’s discoveries regarding cameras and how to project and capture images led to the modern development of cameras around the same concepts. Without his research into how light travels through apertures and is projected by them, the modern mechanisms inside everyone’s cameras would not exist.

5 Muslim Inventions That Changed The World | Lost Islamic History

 

[Leader]

Hundreds of years before Darwin, in the 800s the Iraqi zoologist al-Jahiz pioneered the idea of natural selection as an explanation for how animals adapted traits that suited their environments.

This page is from al-Jahiz's "Book of Animals".

 

[MohitV]

very very interesting and informative thread

Cheraman Juma Masjid

Kerala

India's oldest and one of the world's oldest mosque

built in 629 AD

 

[Leader]

^^ Masjid Muhammad Bin Qasim > Sindh

is said to be the first masjid in the great sub-continent.

another claim is in Bengal. I watched a documentary about it long ago... cc @asad71

 

[asad71]

1.In 50 BC,the Byzantine navigator Hippolatus had discovered the monsoon winds. And that opened the E-W maritime trade route. As a consequence Arab and semi-Arab settlements got established along the route - Gujarat coast, Kerala, Bengal-Arakan coast, the Moluccas, Mindano and Canton(Guangzhou).
2.These settlements were one of the earliest recipients of The Message. Mosques built herein that formative period of Islam were also some of the oldest. Muslim visitors to Canton take great pleasure in offering prayers in one of the oldest mosques. I have also experienced that emotional link with Islam's ancient history when offering my prayers there. My wife couldn't stop her tears.

 

[Leader]

1.In 50 BC,the Byzantine navigator Hippolatus had discovered the monsoon winds. And that opened the E-W maritime trade route. As a consequence Arab and semi-Arab settlements got established along the route - Gujarat coast, Kerala, Bengal-Arakan coast, the Moluccas, Mindano and Canton(Guangzhou).
2.These settlements were one of the earliest recipients of The Message. Mosques built herein that formative period of Islam were also some of the oldest. Muslim visitors to Canton take great pleasure in offering prayers in one of the oldest mosques. I have also experienced that emotional link with Islam's ancient history when offering my prayers there. My wife couldn't stop her tears.

lucky you Sir and your wife.

Did the Mopala tribe built these earliest masjid?

 

[asad71]

lucky you Sir and your wife.

Did the Mopala tribe built these earliest masjid?

Moplas were among the first to revolt against the Christian British-Hindu collusion forged against the Muslims. Similar revolt in Bengal was led by Titu Mir who was martyred battling the British and Hindu Zamindars.

 

[Truth Finder]

very very interesting and informative thread

Cheraman Juma Masjid

Kerala

India's oldest and one of the world's oldest mosque

built in 629 AD

Second oldest.

 

[Leader]

Moplas were among the first to revolt against the Christian British-Hindu collusion forged against the Muslims. Similar revolt in Bengal was led by Titu Mir who was martyred battling the British and Hindu Zamindars.

Sir Mopala tribe according to the legend were told by their forefather's that the last prophet will emerge in Arabia, when the moon is divided into two, so the tribe guarded the moon on full moon dates for centuries, and eventually one day the moon was divided into two and they started gathering resources to travel, it is said they adopted the land route and only a few reached and by the time they reached it was Hazrat Umar's Caliphate, they converted on his hand and returned. It is said only one of them reached back to his tribe.

later when the British came they did revolt as you said against the Hindu feudal and British.. the revolt was brutally crushed and they Hindu/British did a massacre of the Mopala tribe to crush the revolt.

 

[asad71]

Malabar Rebellion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia