The Islamic World to 1600
Throughout the Qur'an one can find a strong emphasis on the value of knowledge in the Islamic faith. The Qur'an encourages Muslims to learn and acquire knowledge, stemming from, but not limited to, the Muslim emphasis on knowing the unity of God. Because Muslims believe that Allah is all-knowing, they also believe that the human world's quest for knowledge leads to further knowing of Allah. Muslims must thus pursue knowledge not only of God's laws, but of the natural world as well, extending the frontiers of human knowledge. Unlike the revealed knowledge of the Qur'an, Muslims believe that human knowledge is not perfect, and requires constant exploration and advancement through research and experimentation. According to the Qur'an, learning and gaining knowledge is the highest form of religious activity for Muslims, and the one which is most pleasing to God.
In the medieval period of Islam, from about the 9th to the 14th centuries, the Muslims led the world in their pursuit of knowledge. The Islamic world at this time was the most scientifically advanced region of the globe, while also making important contributions in philosophy and literature. Part of the Muslim advantage came from the synthesis of ideas from diverse cultures such as the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese, when the Islamic empire expanded in the 7th and 8th centuries. The Muslims made a priority of translating scholarly books from other cultures into Arabic and using them in developing Muslim ideas. The Muslims took Aristotle's philosophy, Ptolemy's geography, Hippocrates' medicine, as well as Persian and Indian works on astronomy and mathematics, and either added to or contradicted them with new discoveries. Every major Islamic city in medieval times had an extensive library; in Cordoba and Baghdad the libraries claim to have had over 400,000 books.
Many Muslim ideas were soon transmitted to medieval Europe, and influenced learning there up until the Renaissance. By the 10th century, Europeans recognised Muslim intellectual superiority, and quickly began translating Muslim works in such fields as medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy from Arabic into Latin, Hebrew, and sometimes vernacular languages as well. By the 13th century, European students were studying at Islamic universities, mostly in Muslim-controlled Spain. Europeans realised that studying in Seville, Cordoba, Toledo, or Granada was the key to acquiring Muslim knowledge. When Latin translations of Muslim books were not completed quickly enough, universities in Toledo, Narbonne, Naples, Bologna, and Paris started teaching Arabic, in order to facilitate reading important scientific works from the Islamic world in their original language.
Only with the onset of the Renaissance would European knowledge surpass that of the Islamic world, but even then, many European scientists and philosophers simply built on the foundations supplied centuries earlier by Muslim scholars. The Islamic influence on the development of modern science is evident in the many Arabic-based words that remain in the English scientific vocabulary, mostly due to the fact that being unfamiliar with the subject matter, Latin translators were unable to change all words into Latin. Examples include algebra, algorithm, chemistry, alchemy, zircon, atlas, almanac, earth, monsoon, alcohol, elixir, aorta, pancreas, colon, cornea, and diaphragm.
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