Intellectual Life • 121into Arabic but did his greatest work in optics. We mentioned already Eu¬
rope's use of Ibn Sina's work as a medical textbook. As a further illustration
of the influence of Middle Eastern medicine, see the drawings in Vesalius's
pioneering work on anatomy, which show many body parts labeled with
Arabic and Hebrew terms. Muslim physicians studied botany and chem¬
istry to discover curative drugs as well as antidotes to various poisons.
Scientific and pseudoscientific methods of observation could be linked.
Chemistry would be mixed with alchemy, and astronomy with astrology.
A knowledge of the movements of stars and planets aided navigation and
overland travel by night. But early Muslims, like most other peoples,
thought that heavenly bodies affected the lives of individuals, cities, and
states, and thus many of the caliphs kept court astrologers as advisers.
Muslims also used astrolabes (devices for measuring the height of stars in
the sky) and built primitive versions of the telescope. One astronomer is
said to have built a planetarium that reproduced not only the movements
of stars but also peals of thunder and flashes of lightning. Long before
Copernicus or Galileo expounded their theories, Muslim scientists knew
that the earth was round and that it revolved around the sun.
To come closer to earth, descriptive geography was a favorite subject
of the early Muslims. Thanks to the Arab conquests and the expansion of
trade throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, they liked to read books de¬
scribing far-off lands and their inhabitants, especially if they could become
trading partners or converts to Islam. Much of what we know about Africa
south of the Sahara from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries comes from
the writings of Arab travelers and geographers. History was also a major
discipline. Nearly all Muslim scientists wrote accounts of the development
of their specialties. Rulers demanded chronicles to publicize what they had
done or to learn from their predecessors' successes and failures. Many
Muslims read accounts of the early caliphs and conquests. Muslim histori¬
ans were the first to try to structure history by seeking patterns in the rise
and fall of dynasties, peoples, and civilizations. These efforts culminated in
the fourteenth century with Ibn Khaldun's monumental Muqaddima,
which linked the rise of states to strong group feeling (asabiya) between
the leaders and their followers.
Literature
Every subject we have discussed so far is part of the Muslims' prose litera¬
ture. Although Arabic remained the major language of both prose and po¬
etry, Persian was revived during the Abbasid era, and Turkish literature