So, what went wrong with Islamic Math & Science?
By: PfanderFilms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt1laZezSjk
A viewer, Gzon Nikqi makes the following remarks concerning why Muslim math and science got better later on, saying, “Whether it is astrology, astronomy, or actual maths, what actually matters is that Muslims eventually figured it out, and when they did, that's when newly built Mosques faced closer to the right way".

"In 14th-century Damascus, the mathematical problem of finding the qibla for the whole Muslim world was solved for all time with the splendid table of al-Khalîlî, giving accurate values to degrees and minutes for each degree of latitude and each degree of longitude difference from the meridian of Makka. I have described al-Khalîlî’s table as “the most sophisticated trigonometric table known to me from the entire medieval period”.

"In the 15th-century Samarqand a table was compiled with entries for each of 275 localities from al-Andalus to China, giving longitudes and latitudes, as well as accurately-computed qibla-directions and distances to Makka".

"From 17th-century Isfahan we have three world maps centered on Makka, so devised that one can read off the qibla accurately for any locality in the Muslim world (the underlying cartographical theory was developed several centuries earlier)".

"These are all highly impressive by medieval standards. What people did with this information is another matter."

"Do you know how accurate they were in 600-700 compared to the text above? Any scientific articles which describes the longitude and latitude precision with data from 600-727 compares to after 727-1400"?

Response:
1) Accurate Qiblas? Possibly he didn’t watch the video? We went through the rate of accuracy in the video, and you will find that the earliest Qiblas (up to 706 AD) were within 2.9% off, even from thousands of miles away, including China, and India, whereas the later Meccan Qiblas (all post 727 AD) were off by more than 4.8%, and they were just a few hundred miles away.

2) Why the 14th century? Can anyone explain why they got worse rather than better, and why it took them until the 14th century to finally understand how to find the correct Qibla?

3) Uniquely sophisticated? “the most sophisticated trigonometric table known to me from the entire medieval period”. This is lifted from a quote by David A. King, the historian of Islamic instrumentation, who describes the universal astrolobe designed by Ibn al-Sarraj of Aleppo (d.1328) as "the most sophisticated astronomical instrument from the entire Medieval and Renaissance periods" (King, D. A (1981), "The Origin of the Astrolabe According to the Medieval Islamic Sources", Journal for the History of Arabic Science, 5: 43–83)

Yet:
• The astrolabe was first invented between 220-150 BC by Hipparchus (Greece).
• Theon of Alexandria (d.405 BC) wrote a detailed treatise on the astrolabe.
• In 550 AD Christian philosopher John Philoponus wrote a treatise on the astrolabe in Greek, which is the earliest extant treatise on the instrument.
• Mesopotamian bishop Severus Sebokht also wrote a treatise on the metal astrolabe in the Syriac language in the mid-7th century, indicating that metal astrolabes were known in the Christian East well before they were developed in the Islamic world.
• It was only in the 8th century that the Muslim mathematician Muhammad al-Fazari built the first Muslim astrolabe, but not till the 8th century, and used mostly for scheduling prayer times, and for finding the Qibla (Richard Nelson Frye: Golden Age of Persia. p. 163).

4) Revisionist History? Concerning Medieval Mathematics, Jim al-Khalili (BBC 2016) suggested that algebra, algorithm and alkali were all Islamic, where he says “there would be no modern mathematics or physics without algebra, no computers without algorithms and no chemistry without alkalis”.
Yet:
• Al-Khwarizmi is credited with establishing the mathematical tradition called algebra.
• However, he only translated, formalized and commented on ancient Indian and Greek works.
• It is even doubtful whether al-Khwarizmi was really a Muslim. In all likelihood he was a Zoroastrian.
• The roots of algebra date back to the ancient Babylonians, and were then developed in Egypt and Greece, including the Alexandrian Greek mathematician Diophantus (3rd century AD), sometimes called “the father of algebra”, while the Chinese and especially the Indians (Brahmagupta) also advanced algebra and wrote important works on the subject before the Muslims.

5) Modern times? Can Muslims explain why, if as they suggest, the Islamic world was so advanced mathematically in the 14th and 15th centuries, that nothing has happened since? In fact, Islamic nations today are some of the most backward in areas of science, mathematics, technology. Is there anything they produce (besides oil) which is considered world class standard? What has happened to Islam in the intervening years, and why haven't they been able to keep up with the rest of the world?

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020