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Stories from HistoryThe Middle Ages Around the WorldD2.His.3.3-5

The Rise of Islam and a Golden Age of Learning

Muslims believe that God sent messages to Muhammad, beginning about AD 610, and that the Quran holds those messages. Islam spread quickly, and cities such as Baghdad and Córdoba became centers of science, medicine and books.

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In the trading city of Mecca, in Arabia, a merchant named Muhammad often went to a cave in the mountains to pray and think. Muslims believe that one night, about AD 610, the angel Gabriel came to him with a message from God, and that more messages came over the next 23 years.

Key idea

Muslims, the followers of Islam, believe there is one God (in Arabic, Allah) and that Muhammad was God's final prophet. The messages he received were gathered into the Quran, the holy book of Islam. In AD 622 Muhammad and his followers moved to Medina; this journey, the Hijra, is the first year of the Islamic calendar.

Muslims follow the Five Pillars: declaring their faith, praying five times a day, giving to the poor, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and, if they can, making the pilgrimage to Mecca once in their lives. Within 100 years after Muhammad's death in AD 632, Muslim rulers governed lands from Spain to India.

Mecca and Medina, and two great centers of learning: Baghdad and Córdoba.

In Baghdad, in the 800s, scholars at the House of Wisdom translated Greek, Persian and Indian books into Arabic and added discoveries of their own. Al-Khwarizmi wrote a book on solving equations; its title gave us the word algebra. Ibn al-Haytham did experiments on light and how we see. Doctors ran hospitals, and astronomers built observatories.

Scholars, merchants and translators made the cities of the Islamic world centers of learning and trade.

Worked example: Where did our numbers come from?

We write numbers with ten digits, 0 to 9. Where did they come from?
  1. These numerals, with zero and place value, were developed in India.
  2. Scholars in Baghdad, like al-Khwarizmi, wrote about them in Arabic, and Europeans learned them from Arabic books.

Answer: From India, by way of the Arab world: we call them Hindu-Arabic numerals.

Common mistake

Thinking the numerals 0 to 9 came from Rome. Romans used letters (I, V, X), and had no zero.

Try it at home

  • Draw an eight-pointed star pattern: trace around a round lid, mark eight evenly spaced points, and join them with a ruler. Patterns like this decorate many mosques and palaces.
  • Count in Roman numerals and in our numerals. Which is easier for adding big numbers?
Going further. The Math Ladder begins with place value, the idea that came to us through these scholars. The kingdoms of Africa that traded with the Islamic world come next in Kingdoms of Africa.

Practice

Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 2 XP.

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