JOURNEY TOWARDS PROGRESS

There were four centers of civilization before the advent of Christ—Persia, China, India and Greece. After the advent of the Prophet of Islam, the Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mansoor, built Baghdad in 762. He invited religious scholars and intellectuals to come from far and near and encouraged the rendering of books in various languages into Arabic. This work started under the patronage of the state. In 830 Al-Mamun established in Baghdad his famous Bayt al Hikmah, a combination library, academy and translation bureau, and an astronomical observatory. The work of translation continued with such speed and on such a vast scale that, within eighty years after the establishment of Baghdad, most of the books in Greek had already been rendered into Arabic.

During the Abbasid era, paper was being manufactured on a large scale, so there was no dearth of paper for writing books. There were more than 400,000 books in the library of Cordova (Spain) in the tenth century, whereas in Europe at that time, according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, the library of Canterbury was at the top of the list of Christian libraries with 1800 books in the 13th century.

Al-Mamun’s astronomers performed one of the most delicate geodetic operations—the measuring of the length of a terrestrial degree. The object was to determine the size of the earth and its circumference on the assumption that the earth was round. The measurement, carried out on the plain of Sinjar, north of the Euphrates, and near Palmyra, yielded 562 Arabic miles as the length of a degree of the meridian—a remarkably accurate result, exceeding the real length of the degree at that place by about 2877 feet. This would make the circumference of the earth 20,400 miles and its diameter 6500. Among those who took part in this operation were the sons of Musa ibn Shakir and al-Khwarizmi, whose tables, revised a century and a half later by the Spanish astronomer Maslamah al-Majriti and translated into Latin in 1126 by Adelard of Bath, became the bases for other works both in the East and the West. No less a feat was that of Al-Idrisi who, as early as the 12th century, made a map of the world in which he even showed the source of the River Nile, which was not discovered by Europe till the 19th century.

All these activities were going on in the world of Islam at a time when the whole of Europe believed that the earth was flat.

Ptolemy, the well-known Greek astronomer of the 2nd century, had presented the earth-centered theory of the solar system, in his famous book, Almajest. This concept dominated the minds of the people all over the world for about 1500 years, until, in the 16th century, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler carried out research which ultimately proved its falsity. But it was the Muslims, who first transferred to Europe the concept of the earth being round and the almost correct concept of the causes of the ebb and flow of the tides.

If a wrong concept about the revolution of the earth remained predominant for such a long period of time, it was due to the error of regarding something non-sacred as sacred. The Christians believed that the earth was a sacred sphere, being the birthplace of the son of God (Christ). Because of this belief, they found the notion that the earth was the center around which the whole universe revolved exactly in accordance with their religious beliefs. It was this idea of the earth’s sacredness, which came in the way of the Christians making any further investigation. It was not until the naked reality finally forced itself upon them that they stopped adhering to this theory.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984) says:

According to the old cosmology the Earth was the centre of the universe, man was the highest creature of this Earth, and his salvation was the central event in heaven and on Earth. The discovery that the Earth is only one planet among others that rotate around the sun, and that the sun is only an insignificant star among the innumerable galaxies of the cosmos, has shaken the old understanding of man. If the Earth, compared to the huge expanses of the universe, was only a speck of dust in the structure of the macrocosm, Newton and others began to explore the question of how man, the dust of dust, could continue to claim the holy privilege that he and his fame were the goal and culmination of God’s actions.¹³

The Christians held Christ to be a part of the holy Trinity and developed the concept that the most important event of history ever to take place on earth was the crucifixion of God’s son for the atonement of man’s sins. In this way, the earth came to hold a sacred position in their set of beliefs. They offered the most stiff opposition to any such thinking as could undermine the central position of the earth. It was this belief that came in the way of free investigation of the solar system.

Holding the non-sacred to be sacred had thus locked the doors to all progress. Holding the moon sacred came in the way of nurturing the thought of man setting foot upon it. Holding the river sacred came in the way of man ever planning to produce electricity by conquering the river. Holding the cow sacred came in the way of man gauging the importance of its protein-rich meat and making it a part of his diet. All such research and investigation could start only when natural phenomena could be brought down from their pedestal of sanctity to a level on which man could look at them as normal, everyday things.

Prior to Islam, the stars were objects of veneration. But after the Islamic revolution, observatories were built and the stars were subjected to observational research on a large scale, something which had never previously been attempted. The minerals embedded in the earth’s crust were likewise regarded as sacred. But Muslims, having developed the science of chemistry, subjected them for the first time to scientific examination. The entire earth for that matter was considered to be a deity. (It was even thought that the sky was a male deity and the earth a female deity) The Muslims again were the first to measure it to find out its diameter and circumference. The sea, too, was an object of worship, but the Muslims became the greatest pioneers in using it as a vast highway. Storms and the wind were held to be mysterious forces and, as such, were objects of awe and reverence. The Muslims set them to turning their windmills.

Mysterious stories were associated with trees and thus the trees too had become worthy of veneration. The Muslims started investigating them and succeeded in enriching Dioscorides’ Herbal by 2000 species.

The rivers, too, were held to be sacred and therefore alive. Boys and girls were, therefore, sacrificed to these deities in order to please them. Muslims, however, used the same rivers for irrigation by making canals, thus ushering in a new age of agriculture.

In those days, Muslims were so ahead of other nations that when they were driven out of Spain, the astrolabes they left behind, by means of which they had studied heavenly bodies, were turned into the clock tower of a church, as the Christians did not understand their use.

It is a fact that in ancient times, polytheism and superstition held sway all over the world. And it is also true that it was this polytheism and superstition, which were the major obstacles to all kinds of progress. The revolution based on monotheism, which was brought about in the wake of Islam, put an almost complete end to polytheism and superstition for the first time in history. Afterwards, as a natural result, human history took to the path of progress.

In ancient times, certain countries produced men with creative minds, who could think independently of their environment. But due to the unfavourable atmosphere and hostile environment of the times, their efforts could not be brought to fruition. The buds of their knowledge withered away before they could flower. However, when the Islamic revolution produced a favourable atmosphere, it unleashed a mighty flood of knowledge, which had been kept pent up for thousands of years by the dam of superstition.