Coffee
About 1,600,000,000 cups of coffee are consumed
every day around the world. Billions of people rely on
it as part of their daily routines. And yet, very few
people are aware of the Muslim origins of this
ubiquitous drink.
According to the historical record, in the 1400s coffee
became a very popular drink among Muslims in
Yemen, in the southern Arabian Peninsula. Legend
goes that a shepherd (some say in Yemen, some say
in Ethiopia) noticed that his goats became very
energetic and jumpy when they ate beans from a
particular tree. He had the courage to try them
himself, noticing they gave him an energy boost.
Over time, the tradition of roasting the beans and
immersing them in water to create a sour yet
powerful drink developed, and thus, coffee was born.
Regardless of whether or not the story of the
shepherd ever really happened, coffee found its way
from the highlands of Yemen to the rest of the
Ottoman Empire, the premier Muslim empire of the
15th century. Coffeehouses specializing in the new
drink began to spring up in all the major cities of the
Muslim world: Cairo, Istanbul, Damascus, Baghdad.
From the Muslim world, the drink found its way into
Europe through the great merchant city of Venice.
Although it was at first denounced as the “Muslim
drink” by Catholic authorities, coffee became a part
of European culture. The coffeehouses of the 1600s
was where philosophers met and discussed issues
such as the rights of man, the role of government,
and democracy. These discussions over coffee
spawned what became the Enlightenment, one of the
most powerful intellectual movements of the modern
world.
From a Yemeni/Ethiopian shepherd to shaping
European political thought to over 1 billion cups per
day, this Muslim innovation is one of the most
important inventions of human history.
Algebra
While many secondary school students struggling
through math classes may not particularly appreciate
the importance of algebra, it is one of the most
important contributions of the Muslim Golden Age to
the modern world. It was developed by the great
scientist and mathematician, Muhammad ibn Musa
al-Khawarizmi, who lived from 780 to 850 in Persia
and Iraq.
In his monumental book, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaar fī isāb
al-jabr wa-l-muqābala (English: The Compendious
Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing),
he set forth the basic principles of algebraic
equations. The name of the book itself contains the
word “al-jabr”, meaning “completion”, from which
the Latin word algebra is derived. In the book, al-
Khawarizmi explains how to use algebraic equations
with unknown variables to solve real-world problems
such as zakat calculation and inheritance division. A
unique aspect of his reasoning for developing
algebra is the desire to make calculations mandated
by Islamic law easier to complete in a world without
calculators and computers.
Al-Khawarizimi’s books were translated into Latin in
Europe in the 1000s and 1100s, where he was known
as Algoritmi (the word algorithm is based on his
name and his mathematical works). Without his work
in developing algebra, modern practical applications
of math, such as engineering, would not be possible.
His works were used as math textbooks in European
universities for hundreds of years after his death.
Degree-Granting Universities
Speaking of universities, that is also an invention
made possible by the Muslim world. Early on in
Islamic history, mosques doubled as schools. The
same people who led prayers would teach groups of
students about Islamic sciences such as Quran, fiqh
(jurisprudence), and hadith. As the Muslim world
grew however, there needed to be formal
institutions, known as madrasas, dedicated to the
education of students.
The first formal madrasa was al-Karaouine, founded
in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri in Fes, Morocco. Her school
attracted some of the leading scholars of North
Africa, as well as the land’s brightest students. At al-
Karaouine, students were taught by teachers for a
number of years in a variety of subjects ranging from
secular to religious sciences. At the end of the
program, if the teachers deemed their students
qualified, they would grant them a certificate known
as an ijaza, which recognizes that the student
understood the material and is now qualified to teach
it.
These first degree-granting educational institutes
quickly spread throughout the Muslim world. Al-
Azhar University was founded in Cairo in 970, and in
the 1000s, the Seljuks established dozens of
madrasas throughout the Middle East. The concept of
institutes that grant certificates of completion
(degrees) spread into Europe through Muslim Spain,
where European students would travel to study. The
Universities of Bologna in Italy and Oxford in England
were founded in the 11th and 12th centuries and
continued the Muslim tradition of granting degrees
to students who deserved them, and using it as a
judge of a person’s qualifications in a particular
subject.
Military Marching Bands
Many students who attended high schools and
universities in the Western world are familiar with
the marching band. Made up of a group of a few
hundred musicians, a band marches onto a field
during a sporting event to entertain the audience and
cheer on the players. These school marching bands
developed from the use of marching military bands
during the Gunpowder Age in Europe that were
designed to encourage soldiers during battle. This
tradition has its origins in the Ottoman mehter bands
of the 1300s that helped make the Ottoman army one
of the most powerful in the world.
As part of the elite Janissary corps of the Ottoman
Empire, the mehter band’s purpose was to play loud
music that would frighten enemies and encourage
allies. Using enormous drums and clashing cymbals,
the sounds created by a mehter band could stretch
for miles. During the Ottoman conquest of the
Balkans throughout the 14th -16th centuries, mehter
bands accompanied the fearsome Ottoman armies,
who seemed almost invincible even in the face of
huge European alliances.
Eventually, Christian Europe also caught on to the use
of military bands to frighten enemies. Legend has it
that after the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, the
retreating Ottoman army left behind dozens of
musical instruments, which the Austrians collected,
studied, and put to their own use. Armies all over
Europe soon began implementing marching military
bands, revolutionizing the way war was fought in
Europe for centuries.
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