العرب من حوالى 600 إلى 1000 ميلادية _ المذهب الفكري الإسلامي .. من روما الى بغداد

Arabs from about 600 to 1000 AD - Islamic intellectual school .. From Rome to Baghdad

Arabs from about 600 to 1000 AD

The Torah tells in its story about Abraham that an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar became pregnant by him, and when his wife Sarah had given birth to a son, she asked Abraham to send Hagar away. Hagar and the child wandered in the desert, but they managed to escape. According to Islamic law, the son, Ishmael, founded his own branch, the Arabs. From this branch, around 570 AD, came the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad bin Abdullah, may God bless him and grant him peace.

The Prophet Muhammad finally triumphed and united the tribes in this region, and converted all the pagan shrines to Islam. When Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) died, the caliphs who came after him continued in this direction.

Figure (3) - (1) The influence of the ancient Islamic empire is seen everywhere in the modern world. The lamp of learning seen on the shield of Augusta College in Augusta, Georgia, USA, has its origins in Arab civilization.

Conquest became the way of life for the followers of Islam, the Muslims, so that between 640 and 720 AD, Egypt, Persia, Syria, North Africa, and Spain were conquered by the Arabs. Within a hundred years of the death of Muhammad, the Islamic empire stretched from the Himalayas to the Pyrenees.

There are many myths that accompany the building of the Islamic empire. One is that it was completely aggressive, but, nevertheless, Alexandria surrendered without a fight, perhaps in favor of the Muslims over their Byzantine rulers. Another belief, and probably the dominant misconception, is that the Arabs had designs on Europe. But there is no evidence that the Arabs wanted to contain or integrate Europe.

The only Arab army that ventured beyond Spain was there at the invitation of a European ruler who was trying to score a personal advantage. The Arabs did not like the climate of northern Europe, which was much colder than the Mediterranean, and there was no hope of rent or income to be gained from a people struggling to make a living. Their idea of ​​Europeans was that they were backward, and the Arabs were probably reluctant, due to their general hygiene practices, or lack thereof, so Spain was the stopover of the Arab conquest. This foothold later became particularly important for the history of chemistry: it opened Europe to the teachings of the Arabs, the Greeks, and the East.

Islamic Intellectualism

Muslims were lively, pure, and eager intellectuals. The Islamic religion required people to understand the Qur’an for themselves, so literacy was widespread, unlike the Roman Christian Church, which relied on the understanding of the Bible by the church leaders, which meant that only the clergy were required to be able to read. This emphasis on literacy translated into interest in all intellectual professions, including alchemy and chemical technology, and knowledge was acquired from scholars, schools, and libraries in the conquered countries. Some knowledge, however, was acquired in less convenient ways.

Greek Fire

The Arabs first became acquainted with the incendiary weapon called Greek fire when it was used against them by the Byzantines. In fact, it may have been the powerful factor that prevented the fall of Constantinople and preserved the Eastern Roman Empire. Greek fire was a viscous liquid sprayed by pump-like machines onto attacking ships. This liquid ignited violently on contact with water. The components of this fire were a state secret known only to the Byzantine emperor and the family of Callinicus.

The exact composition is still unknown, but it can be inferred from the recorded properties of this fire. It was most likely composed of a self-igniting mixture such as quicklime in a base of petroleum. Quicklime is an impure substance consisting of calcium oxide obtained by heating limestone or calcareous shells. When this quicklime combines with water, a large amount of heat is generated. If a mixture of quicklime and petroleum is exposed to water, the heat can ignite the petroleum.

The only things supposedly effective in putting out Greek fire were sand, urine, and vinegar. Vinegar here probably means a strong salt solution, which forms a crust after evaporation and extinguishes the flames by isolating it from oxygen. Urine also means some kind of concentrated solution, such as old urine collections that have evaporated and may contain a lot of sediment. Fresh urine could not have any effect because it is mostly water, and because there were probably not enough volunteers to carry out the idea.

Such chemical weapons were not new to the world. Besieged cities had been throwing burning sulfur, asphalt, and pitch at soldiers since the third century AD. The Assyrians and Peloponnesian Greeks used petroleum liquid, or naphtha from oil wells, with burning pitch and sulfur. The ignition mechanism was not new either. Pliny recorded that quicklime mixed with petroleum or sulfur would ignite instantly if wetted with water. Such a mixture may have been used, like magic, to light lamps in shrines and tombs starting in the third century AD. The architect of Constantinople may have invented a mechanism to throw Greek fire in a pump-like manner. Thus, it is a triumph of chemical engineering and chemistry together.

In any case, the Muslims learned the trick and the Europeans encountered Greek fire while fighting the Muslims in the Crusades in Syria and Egypt. The days turned so that the invention was directed against its inventors, and it may have been used in the siege of Constantinople in the thirteenth century AD. Greek fire disappeared and was no longer used in this way after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but chemical weapons and others are still with us and will resurface.