Long before the European Enlightenment, scholars and researchers working
from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in Spain advanced our
knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine
and philosophy.
From Musa al-Khwarizmi, who developed algebra in ninth-century Baghdad,
to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include
the crank, the camshaft and the reciprocating piston, Ehsan Masood tells
the amazing story of one of history's most misunderstood yet rich and
fertile periods in science, via the scholars, research, and science of
the Islamic empires of the Middle Ages.