My mothers' students have finally finished up with Islam and moved on to the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance period, but I only recently finished slogging through the piles and piles of papers generated by their study of the Muslim Empire (with occasional incursions into Africa, where, I'm told, "People were filled with salt water from the ocean"). Fortunately, I found a few little gems to keep me entertained.
If you have even a basic knowledge of world history, you're already familiar with the many ways in which Muslims have contributed to the world as we know it today. Now here's the stuff I bet you didn't know.
Why is Muslim religion an Islim? Muslims were among the first to establish observations.
Knowledge was used for learning and teaching. Muslim scholars knew a lot about everything I'm talking about because of the knowledge of them human scholars.
The Muslims have some thing that we use now like they had there own peasant. And now we have a peasant.
The definitions for all of these Muslim contributions were a whole bunch of words and letters. The good thing is that the Muslim Contributions were not that many of them and were not a little bit either.
Speaking of letters and mysterious quantities . . . a Muslim mathematician named Al-Khwarizmi wrote the first major work on algebra; translated into Latin, his book introduced algebra to the Western world. Can you imagine what the world would be like if no one had ever thought up algebra? Well, for starters, we'd be left with only the most primitive technology. . . . Of course, some of the benefits we derive from algebra are more important than others. I leave it to you to sort which these might be.
Another interesting fact is that the Muslims built Algebra.
Because Muslims developed algebra today I am able to play my favorite video games in my game system any time I want.
Because the Muslims created algebra I am able to play my video game, Xbox 360 online with my friends.
Because of [algebra] we are all able to use our computers for homework.
If the Muslims wouldn't invented or created Algebra we wouldn't have light.
Algebra is also the name of a math book that mostly all 8th graders take. Algebra allows you to solve any math equation that has to do with Pre-Algebra Course 2.
Whatever mathematical smarts the Arabs had came from two sources the Hindus and the Greeks.
OK then, forget algebra - but we have Muslim doctors to thank for some of our most important medical knowledge. They studied sickness and health and the human body in a far more systematic and scientific way in the first millennium C.E. than their European counterparts would for several centuries to come. I'm not sure if they knew that if you don't punctuate a sentence properly, it might come out making grammatical sense but not quite communicating what you meant. Then again, I'm not sure they'd want to know.
The medicine was a really important part of the Muslim religion based on the Internet.
Thanks to the Muslim contribution of Medicine, I have a plethora of people in my life.
Muslim doctors encouraged deadliness and personal hygiene.
Muslim doctors identified smallpox and measles encouraged cleanliness and personal hygiene maintained excellent hospitals and medical school kept patients' records.
One Muslim contribution that is still used today to help identify parts of humans is the anatomy. When having to identify an anatomy Muslims used autopsies.
Another reason people take medicine is because they are about to go into surgery or an autopsy of some sort.
It was Muslims who first attempted to transform base metals into gold. They were unsuccessful in the endeavor, but the knowledge the alchemists gleaned from their efforts evolved into the modern science of chemistry. One student's paper had a lot to say about chemistry, but nothing to say about Muslims. "Since an electron is a fermion," this young man wrote, "no two electrons can occupy the same quantum." This is true. Still, why do I have the feeling his paper wasn't exactly his own original work?
Ah yes . . . if it weren't for those medieval Muslims, our world would surely be going to hell in a handbasket . . .
Muslim art helps us because it involves teenagers in art instead of being in drugs.
Muslims put pants and geometric figures in their art.
This is your brain. This is your brain on (Persian) rugs. Any questions?
When it came time to compare and contrast Muslim practices and traditions with the students' own cultural habits, it was an occasion to wax philosophical. Of course, some practices have different meanings in different cultures. Muslims fast during the month of Ramadan, but people have been known to fast for any number of reasons, religious or otherwise. I thought I'd heard them all (dieting, Lent, medical reasons), but you might be as surprised as I was to discover that "the Jewish people fast on the day before Easter, because of the birth of Jesus Christ."
One young man offered a rather intriguing perspective on the virtues of almsgiving. I think he must have been a Roman emperor in a past life. Considering that he has a strategy in mind to avert Armageddon, maybe we should make him emperor in this life too. Okay, maybe not.
It is good to give to the poor so they would not rebel against us. The popularity of humans would increase and our humanity would never end. We would be in peace and the world would never end.
One student had a most interesting perspective on poverty in general: "They have a tolient to a bush but in a tolit."
Perhaps the most universal of human experiences is death. That doesn't mean, of course, that there aren't some aspects of death and dying that change across the centuries and from culture to culture.
Koran was like death valley where you would die for any reason like if they saw you do something bad or if you killed someone they would do the same thing to you.
Death relates to our kind of death.
Death was horrifying in the past and now it's kind of nasty because we have weapons.
That death is a very crazy thing and it is something you do not want to happen to you.
Now I've got this song by Pink running through my head, only in my head she's singing, "Oh death, death's a very crazy thing, never wanted it to happen, cause it's so nas-tee, just like Death Val-lee."
Now that's my kind of death.
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