Issues and Questions
True Wisdom: The Source of Abundant Fortune
By Dr. Muzammil H. Siddiqi
Whatever is in the heavens and
on earth, doth declare the Praises and Glory of
Allah; the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Exalted
in Might, the Wise. It is He Who has sent amongst
the Unlettered a Messenger from among themselves,
to rehearse to them His Signs, to sanctify them,
and to instruct them in Scripture and Wisdom, -
although they had been, before, in manifest error;
- As well as (to confer all these benefits upon)
others of them, who have not already joined them:
and He is Exalted in Might, Wise. Such is the Bounty
of Allah, which He bestows on whom He will: and
Allah is the Lord of the highest bounty.
(Al-Jumu’ah 62:1-4)
He grants wisdom unto whom He wills; and whosoever
is granted wisdom is granted abundant fortune; but
none will bear this in mind except the people of
understanding.
(Al-Baqarah 2:269)
Al-Hikmah is a very important word of the Qur’an.
It means “wisdom and sagacity.” We are
talking about true wisdom, not the worldly and materialistic
wisdom that makes people forget Allah. True wisdom
comes from faith and fear of Allah. It means right
knowledge and right action and it entails putting
things in their right perspective, understanding
the situation and circumstances and taking action
at a right time in a right way. Al-Hikmah is a great
gift of Allah and those who have this gift they
are endowed with abundant boon and fortune (khayran
kathiran).
Al-Hakim (the Wise) is one of the names of Allah
that is mentioned more than one hundred times in
the Qur’an. Very often this quality of Allah
is mentioned with His quality as Powerful (al-‘Aziz);
sometimes it is also mentioned with His qualities
as Knower (al-‘Alim), Aware (Al-Khabir), All
Comprehensive (al-Wasi’) and Acceptor of repentance
(al-Tawwab). Allah’s revelation is called
al-Hikmah. Allah has mentioned the wisdom of Prophets
Yusuf (12:22), Prophet Daud (al-Baqarah 2:251) and
Prophet ‘Isa (‘Al ‘Imran 3:48).
Luqman was not a Prophet but it is mentioned that
he was also granted great wisdom (Luqman 31:12).
Allah sent His Last and Final Prophet Muhammad –peace
and blessings of Allah be upon him- to teach the
Book and Wisdom. His followers are supposed to be
the people who use wisdom in every aspect of their
life and in all relations.
Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas –may Allah be pleased
with him- was a great scholar of the Qur’an
and Fiqh. He said:
Ibn ‘Abbas said that the Prophet – peace
be upon him - embraced me to his chest and said,
“O Allah teach him wisdom.” (Al-Bukhari
3473)
Ibn Hajar says, “Various explanation of al-Hikmah
are given by scholars here: Understanding the words
of Allah, what is right according to human reason,
enlightenment by which a person can make distinction
between inspiration from Allah or suggestions from
Satan. Some say it means correct and quick answer.
Others have given other meanings. Ibn ‘Abbas
was the most knowledgeable person among the Sahabah
in Tafsir.”
Wisdom is needed for both: knowledge and action.
Wisdom in knowledge means knowing the reality as
it is and understanding the truth in all matters.
Wisdom in action means taking the proper and appropriate
action. It means being strong when strength is required
and being soft when softness is needed. It means
fulfilling your duties and recognizing different
commitments and different obligations.
In Surah al-Isra’ (17:23-39) Allah has mentioned
12 important principles of Wisdom:
1. Worship Allah alone.
2. Be respectful and kind to the parents.
3. Be good to your relatives, to the poor and the
travelers.
4. Be careful with your money. Do not waste your
resources.
5. Take good care of your children.
6. Do not commit adultery or fornication.
7. Respect every life. Do not kill anyone unless
in the pursuit of justice.
8. Take care of the orphans and weak people.
9. Fulfill the promises and your commitments.
10. Be honest in business dealings. Do not cheat
in weight or measurement.
11. Do things with knowledge. Do not follow the
hearsay or act on half- knowledge.
12. Be humble and have no arrogance.
(Khutbah at ISOC – Safar 3, 1427/March 3,
2006)
How Islamic
Inventors Changed the World
FROM
coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the
Muslim world has given us many innovations that
we take for granted in daily life.
As a new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely
nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies
the men of genius behind them.
1. The story goes that an Arab named
Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region
of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals
became livelier after eating a certain berry. He
boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly
the first record of the drink is of beans exported
from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay
awake all night to pray on special occasions. By
the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and
Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645.
It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named
Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in
Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic
qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian
caffé and then English coffee.
2. The ancient Greeks thought our
eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us
to see. The first person to realise that light enters
the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century
Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn
al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera
after noticing the way light came through a hole
in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better
the picture, he worked out, and set up the first
Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a
dark or private room). He is also credited with
being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical
activity to an experimental one.
3. A form of chess was played in ancient
India but the game was developed into the form we
know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward
to Europe - where it was introduced by the Moors
in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward as far
as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh,
which means chariot.
4. A thousand years before the Wright
brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and
engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts
to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped
from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba
using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts.
He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the
cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought
to be the first parachute, and leaving him with
only minor injuries. In 875, aged 70, having perfected
a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried
again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant
height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed
on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was
because he had not given his device a tail so it
would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport
and a crater on the Moon are named after him.
5.
Washing and bathing are religious requirements for
Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the
recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient
Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans
who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs
who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide
and aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders'
most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils,
was that they did not wash. Shampoo was introduced
to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian
Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was
appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV
and William IV.
6. Distillation, the means of separating
liquids through differences in their boiling points,
was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost
scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy
into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes
and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction,
crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation,
evaporation and filtration. As well as discovering
sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic
still, giving the world intense rosewater and other
perfumes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking
them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan
emphasised systematic experimentation and was the
founder of modern chemistry.
7. The crank-shaft is a device which
translates rotary into linear motion and is central
to much of the machinery in the modern world, not
least the internal combustion engine. One of the
most important mechanical inventions in the history
of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim
engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation.
His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical
Devices shows he also invented or refined the use
of valves and pistons, devised some of the first
mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and
was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions
was the combination lock.
8. Quilting is a method of sewing
or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating
material in between. It is not clear whether it
was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was
imported there from India or China. But it certainly
came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it
used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled
quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well
as a form of protection, it proved an effective
guard against the chafing of the Crusaders' metal
armour and was an effective form of insulation -
so much so that it became a cottage industry back
home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.
9.
The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe's Gothic
cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic
architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded
arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing
the building of bigger, higher, more complex and
grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim
genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and
dome-building techniques. Europe's castles were
also adapted to copy the Islamic world's - with
arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets.
Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily
defended round ones. Henry V's castle architect
was a Muslim.
10. Many modern surgical instruments
are of exactly the same design as those devised
in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi.
His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors
for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments
he devised are recognizable to a modern surgeon.
It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal
stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he
made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that
it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In
the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn
Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300
years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims
doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and
alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck
cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.
11. The windmill was invented in 634
for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn
and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts
of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the
only source of power was the wind which blew steadily
from one direction for months. Mills had six or
12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. It was
500 years before the first windmill was seen in
Europe.
12. The technique of inoculation was
not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised
in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey
by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul
in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with
cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50
years before the West discovered it.
13.
The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of
Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would
not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a
reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the
nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.
14. The system of numbering in use
all round the world is probably Indian in origin
but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first
appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians
al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was
named after al-Khwarizmi's book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah,
much of whose contents are still in use. The work
of Muslim maths scholars was imported into Europe
300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci.
Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry
came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi's discovery
of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of
the ancient world soluble and created the basis
of modern cryptology.
15. Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname
of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba
in the 9th century and brought with him the concept
of the three-course meal - soup, followed by fish
or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced
crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments
with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).
16. Carpets were regarded as part
of Paradise by medieval Muslims, thanks to their
advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from
Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of
pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam's
non-representational art. In contrast, Europe's
floors were distinctly earthly, not to say earthy,
until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced.
In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered
in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly
that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes
for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting,
the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps
of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned".
Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.
17. The modern cheque comes from the
Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when
they were delivered, to avoid money having to be
transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th
century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque
in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.
18.
By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it
for granted that the Earth was a sphere. The proof,
said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun
is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth".
It was 500 years before that realisation dawned
on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers
were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned
the Earth's circumference to be 40,253.4km - less
than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe
depicting the world to the court of King Roger of
Sicily in 1139.
19. Though the Chinese invented saltpetre
gunpowder, and used it in their fireworks, it was
the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified
using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim
incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders. By the
15th century they had invented both a rocket, which
they called a "self-moving and combusting egg",
and a torpedo - a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb
with a spear at the front which impaled itself in
enemy ships and then blew up.
20. Medieval Europe had kitchen and
herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed
the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and
meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in
Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain.
Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include
the carnation and the tulip.
Courtesy The Independent, UK
