Islamic Golden Age Essay

The Islamic golden age during the Abbasid era has seen a significant advancement in many fields and became the major source for science, economy, philosophy, art and architecture in the world. During the golden age, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī was one of the leading scientists in the Abbasid era. Al-Khwarizmi’s had many contributes and achievements in many fields, but he was known for Mathematics, astronomy and geography.

Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī was born about780 CE in Hiva (known as Uzbekistan now). Around 825 CE, Al-Khwārizmī had his most productive period when he started working in Baghdad during the caliph al-Ma’mun, who built the house of wisdom in Baghdad. He was one of the main scholar representatives of the house of wisdom. In addition, al-Khwārizmī was the main translator of Greek

He wrote the “Book of the Form of the Earth” or Kitab Surat al-Ard, which was written in 833 CE, contains of 2402 of longitudes and latitudes of the most common geographical locations and cities. The book starts with an index of longitudes and latitudes, according to their weather zones; this system that the book used allowed deduction of many locations where bad weather conditions can be avoided or potentially illegible. Unfortunately, the original or the Latin translated copy of the book didn’t included the world map itself; however, Hubert Daunicht created al-Khwārizmī’s map by using the list of coordinates he wrote in Kitab Surat al-Ard. In addition, it is worth noting that there were some similarities between al-Khwārizmī work and Ptolemy’s geography, Ptolemy (90 CE- 168 CE) is a Greco-Egyptian writer know for his achievements in both geography and mathematics. The similarities can be seen in the description of the world map and the principle distribution list of coordinates and arrangement by regions. Many places that were listed in Ptolemy’s work can be seen in al-Khwārizmī’s book.