The one thing that struck me rather unexpectedly just recently is the evident absence of Arab scientists of bygone eras in the course of our study of astronomy. That some readers of our articles pointed this out to me speaks volumes of their interest in astronomy and cosmology.

While we know and completely agree that Mediaeval-era Muslim scientists, which include those from the Arabian desert, Iran, the gorgeous Central Asia and those from the Maghreb countries, were at the crest of scientific thought and achievements in their age, the Muslim world failed woefully in the case of technology.

For the lapse in technology, the pioneering scientists are not to blame. The society is. As you well know, there was a difference between the societies of the East and West of roughly the same period after the advent of the Industrial Revolution, a few vital centuries plus or minus. Among other causes was the denial of eastern societies at large to accept change.

Muslim societies refused to adapt themselves to the inevitable change and lost out, despite such a plethora of discoveries and the initial work done by these remarkable scientists. Change took place on the surface, and that too sparingly, but did not trickle down to the average person to mark the difference between science and technology. In short, what was acquired in science, was lost at the altar of technology.

That, unfortunately, is true of the scientific progress made under Muslim scientists continuously over a period of some eight centuries – a long while for any other society in history. A long time back I related how the mechanical printing press was spurned during the period of emperor Shahjahan (1628-1658) when the trading Portuguese brought it for display in the court of the grand emperor only to be sneered at. In the eyes of Shahjahan, it failed to compete with the handwritten books with floral borders and animals, painstakingly painted by those countless royal writers of books.

Hence we lost out on the opportunity to build on borrowed technology. The rest is our woeful history. Otherwise, industry in the undivided India was in a pretty advanced stage of development for acceptance of this masterly innovation.

You will agree that any great work of science or philosophy must lean on the work done by their processors, or the people before their generations. Likewise, the Arabs began from where the Greeks had left off. They did make great efforts and built their science on sound footing. The Arabs built upon the work of the Greeks and Romans and formulated many, many fundamental laws that served as beacons for the coming generations.

There are dozens of Arab scientists who strained hard for centuries to leave for posterity astounding works on astronomy, physics, visual arts, mathematics, philosophy, ophthalmology, geography, optics, cartography, calligraphy, medicine, chemistry etc., but their societies failed to turn the labour of centuries into palpable technology. In simple terms, means that the benefit could not be converted/imparted to the teeming millions who only laboured fruitlessly under the hot sun, generation after generation.

One possible reason for this is that technology, when streaming down to the common man, would have eroded the power of the King, the clergy and the ruling class, and raised the power of the masses. English history right from the eventful Magna Carta ( 1215) down to the present times amply proves this.

Another example of our abject history in these matters is the irrepressible life of Rehan Al-Beruni (973-1050), spelled Biruni in Latin. Born in Khiva, Uzbekistan, he has been called by European historians and critics, the “greatest genius of the world” but was hounded by the king’s men for “spreading false ideas”. Remember Archimedes? He became a sought-after fugitive and found refuge in Pothwar (our own Jhelum) to continue his remaining work on geography. Remember that he was a friend of Mahmud of Ghazna (971-1030) who admired him a great deal. Towards the end he spoke fluent Sanskrit as well as Punjabi.

Yet, it is the West which, following these remarkable Arabs, would benefit from their work and rose up in the post-Renaissance period (14th century onwards) after the decline of the Arabs, beginning in the year 1492. Thus, their voluminous work was sort of lost to the Arabs themselves but found a lease of life in the new-found hands of the West. The numerous Muslim societies, with their rotten political and social systems, failed to pick up the baton and confined themselves to fables from The Arabian Nights, much to their fancy and delight.

This leaves unsaid the truly great works of hundreds of tireless Muslim scientists and philosophers of yore whose labour failed to bear fruit for their own societies because of absence of technology. Their work resulted in no tangible benefit to their own people. Would you still blame me for ignoring them?

The rest is history.

Yet we cannot and shall not ignore them wholly. We owe them a formidable debt for their findings on astronomy. And a lot of other branches of science too. The writer is a professional astronomer associated with PIA and can be reached at astronomerpreone@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, Young World April 29th, 2017