Covering 75 Years of Science & Innovation

Left to right: In Spain, Islam’s Golden Age was at first imitated, then exceeded, as scholars poured in from the Muslim east. One example is the ninth-century scholar ‘Abbas ibn Firnas who experimented with flight 699 years before Leonardo da Vinci and constructed a planetarium in which the planets revolved. This reconstruction by Michael Grimsdale, based on descriptions dating to that era, suggests the elaborate gearing that Ibn Firnas had to have developed. May/June 1982, “Science: The Islamic Legacy” (Illustration by Michael Grimsdale) The first historical reference to science on an AramcoWorld cover. (August 1952, “Leonardo da Vinci”)

Left to right: May/June 2007, “Rediscovering Arabic Science” (Photo by Thorne Anderson) Under the patronage of King Roger II of Sicily, the great Arab geographer and cartographer Al-Idrisi spent 16 years producing the first scientific geography of the known world—Roger’s Book. From the meticulous and unprecedented research also came a great map engraved on an 80-inch silver disk. July/August 1977, “Al-Idrisi and ‘Roger’s Book’” (Illustration by Brian Smith)

Left to right: Persia became part of the Islamic world in 636 CE, and Arab rulers supported the medical school at Jundishahpur, the old Sassanid capital of Persia. For the next 200 years, it was the greatest center of medical teaching in the Islamic world. May/June 1997, “The Arab Roots of European Medicine” (Photo courtesy of Art Resource/Topkapi Palace Museum) The Apollo 15 crew member who took this photograph from more than 25,000 miles up could see almost half the globe, including Cuba and the Bahama Banks, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Sahara, the Andes, the Canaries and the Azores; 500 years ago, from the tip of the Santa Maria’s mast, Columbus’s crew could see at most 20 miles in any direction. May/June 1992, “The Middle East and the Age of Discovery” (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Left to right: Each astrolabe’s front plate is etched with lines that help calculate sunrise, sunset and celestial coordinates by rotating the calibrated rete over them. May/June 2019, “Astrolabe Tech Made... Not So Easy” (Photo courtesy of Alamy/Naval Museum of Madrid) January/February 1992, “The World of Mohamed Zakariya” (Photo by Robert Azzi) It was in the 17th century that the real development of watch-making technology began. Brass and steel parts, replacing iron, came into use around 1625, and in 1660 the hairspring provided a regulating mechanism that acted to moderate the balance wheel of a watch just as gravity moderated the pendulum of a clock. Toward the end of that same century, the export of watches to the East—the Ottoman Empire, Persia and India—began. Most notably, watches made for these regions were usually the finest examples of the watchmaker’s art, often intended as prestigious gifts. For the sultan or prince or court official who owned one, these watches possessed the charm of the exotic, the fascination of an intricate mechanism, the elegance of a piece of jewelry and the inherent value of the precious materials of which they were made. September/October 1994, “Watches for the Middle East” (Photo courtesy of Antiquorum)

Left to right: To suggest the contributions by Muslim scientists to astronomy over the centuries, illustrator Norman MacDonald focused on Halley’s Comet and the Arab world’s most recent contribution at the time: the trip into space by the first Arab, Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud of Saudi Arabia. MacDonald also included a space shuttle launch, the first Arab satellite (on behalf of the 22 Arab League countries), and the proposed space telescope to study the stars. January/February 1986, “Arabs and the Stars” (Illustration by Norman MacDonald) September/October 2010, “Arabic in the Sky” (Photo courtesy of Eric Long/Smithsonian) On Feb. 8, 1985, seven seconds after ignition, an Ariane rocket carried the Arab world’s first communications satellite into space. This and other launch photographs were reproduced from television film using a new process. The film was taken in French Guiana by Radio France Outre-Mer, transmitted by satellite to Paris and shipped to London by UPITN Productions. There, using a newly developed Dai Nippon Video Graphics machine—one of only four in the world—editors selected frames for reproduction. March/April 1985, “Arabs and Space” (Photo courtesy of Radio France Outre-Mer)

Left to right: July/August 1974, “On Campus in Saudi Arabia” (Photo by B. H. Moody) August/September 1960, “Taking it over on tape” (Photo by B. H. Moody)

Left to right: The first real academy of higher education in Islam, apart from a mosque, was Al-Nizamiyah, founded in Baghdad in 1065 CE (about 100 years before the University of Paris) by Nizam al-Mulk, the Persian vizier of two Seljuk sultans. The Nizamiyah had as its backbone the Qur’an and Arabic poetic classics. Many of its students held scholarships—a contribution to such institutions being considered a meritorious act—and all were boarders. The Nizamiyah type of school, the madrasah (literally, “a place of study”), spread throughout the East, as far as Samarkand and to the West as far as Morocco, and certain organizational features were, supposedly, adopted by early European universities. November/December 1969, “Quest for Knowledge: A Special Issue” Outside Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, Edna Adan, 80, has expanded her work caring for women’s health to caring also for land, joining other women to distribute seedlings and teach about caring for plants and wildlife—helping her country recover from a civil war and inspiring a rising generation of female leaders in public service, medicine, environmental conservation and even the arts. July/August 2018, “Somaliland’s Midwife” (Photo by Lorraine Chittock)

Left to right: March/April 1966, “Proud Centennial” (Photo by Tor Eigeland) May/June 2010, “Houses of Wisdom” (Photo courtesy of J. B. Picoulet/PCP/KAUST) July/August 1979, “KFSH: Showcase of the Future” (Photo by Terry Webb)

Left to right: April 1958, “A Little Guy Gets Well” (Photo by Russell Lee) March/April 1999, “Keeping a Promise” (Photos by Richard Doughty) March/April 1975, “Arabs in America” (Photo by Robert Azzi) March/April 1974, “Nursing in the Arab East” (Photo by Peter Keen)

Left to right: A record 192 countries participated in Expo 2020 Dubai, which addressed creative systems for power generation, water conservation and city planning to address global challenges. While most of the countries were housed in buildings erected by the Expo, many others built custom structures. This required each national planning team to submit plans for construction, operation and dismantling that adhered to demanding environmental standards for all aspects of materials, energy, water, recycling and more. May/June 2022, “Sustainability’s Dubai Beta Lab” (Photo by Natalie Naccache) May/June 2024, “The Promises and Challenges of AI for Arabic” (Illustrated by Mujahid Almalki via AI generator)