Thanks for that Rashna, I always thought soap was made by muslims (as my dad told me), turns out it was made much earlier. Makes me wonder else I've been lied to about now.
Here is a great device to add to your list; I bring you the worlds first computer made by the Ancient Greeks-
The Antikythera mechanismIt's a brilliant peice of machinary which shows the orbits of the planets, the moon and our sun. It can be used to predict eclipses and such.
I wonder what else has been lost from the Greek era.
I was told by a Kuwait Muslim living somewhere in Europe that Muslims invented the zero, although the zero was invented in ancient pre Islamic India. This lady's English was poor, so she said Muslims "invaded" the zero.
Muslims neither invented nor invaded the zero, but they certainly invaded the land which invented the zero!
In Egypt, our tour guide told us that Muslims invented the calender, although the calender was invented in Ancient Egypt, millennia before Islam emerged, conquered, Islamized & Arabized Egypt.
I've also been told by Muslims that the Quran stated the concept of a spherical earth long before it was known in the world, although the idea of a spherical earth was known for a millennia,
ancient Greek & ancient Indian scientists stated it looong before Islam came up with an egg shaped earth!
Thanks for that invention Peruvian, Greece too was a Muslim colony for a long time.
Infact, Islam was in a brilliant position geographically, it had easy access to Indian & Chinese knowledge on one side, & Greaco Roman knowledge on the other side, while it immediately conquered the millennia old global superpowers of Egypt, Iraq, Iran & North West India. For some European countries with harsh climatic conditions like the Nordic countries, or U.K., having access to the East's knowledge was tremendously difficult, & for the now very prosperousFar East, access to Greaco Roman knowledge was difficult, for Islam it was easy, besides they also profited immensely from blocking the Silk Road & plundering immensely prosperous infidel nations.
These newly conquered by Islam Mid East countries had an ethic which had long valued knowledge & contributed immensely to world knowledge, & it retained it for some centuries, when the pre dominant faith wasn't Islamic, this ethic took time to peter out. Today if the Heads of State in the West & Japan abruptly turn Muslim, their pre Islamic ethics are going to remain till quite some more time, Islamic ethics & culture would slowly become pre dominant, as it did in Iraq, Iran etc.
I spent 6 months in Dubai and Sharjah last year. On the roads, I would see advertisements for Museum of Islamic science etc. I always wondered, why does everything have an islamic tag attached to it? I never once saw an ad for a museum of Arabic science or a museum of Emirati science.
Cant a muslim ever make a discovery or an invention without it being labeled as an islamic dicovery/invention by other muslims?
Just wondering...
Thats' because the pre Islamic era was termed jahiliyyah or age of ignorance by Muhammad, so all the magnificent achievements of Pre Islamic mid east minds & cultures(& other Islamic cultures) are also part of jahiliyyah, when a country is Islamized, it often stamps on its magnificent pre Islamic ancestral culture, claiming that it was worthless,
like Iran for one. Besides the
Islamic identity is an all encompassing one for its adherents, so other aspects of their identities cease to matter.
Topic: Pre Islamic Achievements of Islamic or Islam Ruled Societies