ABBASID EMPIRE

The Abbasid Caliphate, which governed the majority of the Muslim world from Baghdad in what is now Iraq, lasted from 750 to 1258 AD. The Caliphate was the third of the Islamic Caliphate to succeed the Islamic Prophet Muhammad who was an Arab merchant. The Abbasid Caliphate was founded by the descendant of Uncle of Prophet Muhammad, Al-Abbas ibn Abdul Muttalib, from whom the dynasty takes its name. They ruled as Caliph for most of the Caliphate after having overthrown the Maya Caliphate in the Abbasid Revolution of 750 CE, and this was the period when history took another turn toward advancement. One of the interesting things about this empire was that they preserved much of what they inherited from the other empires. They also collect the knowledge from within the empire and from the people that they encountered on the borders of the empire They did this throughout the Umayyad dynasty, but it really came to its full potential during the Abbasid Caliphate. The Abbasid period is considered a golden age for Islam. The Abbasid were inspired by verses from the Quran and Hadith that emphasizes the value of knowledge rather than just religious devotion. Abbasid Caliphs sponsored great artists, scientists, medical, astronomical, and other scientific texts from the classical period in Greece and Rome were translated into Arabic, saving them from being lost. Therefore, let's move on into details on their characteristic, impact, and contribution to the world. Characteristics of Abbasid Empire The Abbasid had some particular characteristics. Some of the characteristics of Abbasid's empire are as follows. The Abbasid Caliphate built a strong government bureaucracy to rule their empire. Muslim merchants expanded their wealth by trading across Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea. They also built a centralized state absolute power with Baghdad as the capital of the empire. The bureaucracy was under wazirs and there was a royal executioner. The revenue in the form of taxes and tributes were collected. The Abbasids were less powerful at a distance and stronger at the center and they were not as sophisticated as the Umayyads were. Caliphs placed themselves above Islamic law and became remote from the people. There are some golden achievements worth mentioning which are in terms of science, mathematics, medicine, and architecture. The important pioneers of this empire included Caliph Harun al-Rashid, Caliph Mamun al-Rashid, and Al-Mansur. During their time, they built the Baitul Hikmah, House of Wisdom, which refers to a public academy and the center of excellence for knowledge. Muslims were very much into these Houses of Wisdom and therefore made many discoveries. As an example, Ibn Sina, an authority in philosophy and expert in modern medicine, had written a book called Canon of Medicine. Advancements were also made in matters of education, degree-granting universities, law, Islamic jurisprudence, matters of fiqh, Asul al-fiqh, and the theology of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbil who successfully connected people to the book of Allah SWT and the Sunnah. Don't you just hate being ill? Thankfully, advances in modern medicine have led to today's illnesses being managed and treated like never before. We don't often hear of Muslims being inventors, scientists, or changing the world. But what if we told you the world of medicine and health as you know it will be completely different had it not been for the innovation and knowledge of the Islamic world? This series will take a look at some of the things we take for granted today that wouldn't have been possible without some of the inventions and advances of the Islamic golden age. This video will focus on Islamic medicine. Armed with the Quran which made numerous mentions of healing and knowing that God said he has created a cure for every illness, Muslims excelled in discovering new realms in medical science. At a time where Baghdad alone had some 80 hospitals, some of the greatest legacies of the Muslim world to this day are in the medical field. Al-Razi was one of the world's first greatest medical experts. He is considered the father of psychology and psychotherapy, a pioneer in ophthalmology, and was the author of the first ever book on pediatrics. The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays like a laser which enabled us to see. The first person to realize that light enters the eye rather than leaving it was the 10th century Muslim mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Ibn al-Haytham. He invented the first pinhole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. One of the most famous names from Islamic history was Ibn Sina known as the greatest healer of his time. His encyclopedic book Al-Qanun Fi Al-Tib, the canon of medicine, was translated into Latin towards the end of the 12th century and became a reference source medical studies in the universities of Europe until the end of the 17th century. Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called Al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery, and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognizable to modern surgeon. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslim doctors also invented anesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from the eye in a technique still used today. The concept of vaccinations were devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the west discovered it. So now we're going to talk about the impact and contribution of a basic empire to mathematics and astronomy. The person we're going to talk about today is Alhawarizmi, the astronomer and mathematician. We all studied algorithms at some point of our lifetime and I am sure most of us will keep thinking who was the one behind such complex theories? Where does this concept came? His name was Muhammad Ibn Musa Alhawarizmi, born in 840 common era during the Abbasid era under the rule of Al-Ma'mun. He was also closely associated with Bayt Al-Hikmah, an educational institute established by Abbasid caliph. Alhawarizmi contributed extensively that whatever calculations we've done today adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing are linked to Alhawarizmi. He was the one who introduced finding unknown mathematical quantities by using algebra. Ever wonder how numerals came to us? Alhawarizmi was the one who introduced Indian numerals 1 to 9 as well as 0 into Arabic. He also introduces the place value system where the value of a number depended in its position. Therefore the word algorithm comes from Alhawarizmi's latin name Algoritmi. Alhawarizmi also wrote on geography and described earth shape and its different climates. He introduced the world map that include latitude and longitude of many cities and towns with description of seas oceans and rivers. Alhawarizmi said when i consider what people generally want in calculating i found that it is always a number so you can imagine this islamic world these empires between the 8th and the 13th centuries it was actually a very powerful bridge of human knowledge taking knowledge from the indians chinese ancient greeks and providing a bridge of knowledge during the dark ages in europe and we can actually see this from a text by one of the historians during that time period who's called philip heady on a short history of the arabs during all the first part of the middle ages no other people made as important a contribution to human progress as did arabs if we take this term to mean all those whose mother tongue was arabic and not merely those living in the arabian peninsula for centuries arabic was the language of learning culture and intellectual progress for the whole of the civilized world with the exception of the far east from the 9th to the 12th century there were more philosophical medical historical religious astronomical and geographical works written in arabic than in other human tongue the abbasid period is truly the golden age for islam