Contributions of Islamic Scholars To the Scientific Enterprise

Future research

While there is currently research being carried out on the use of single works or the ideas and writings of individual authors, it is too early to draw all possible conclusions. In order to form a comprehensive picture of both the translation processes, and the transmission of scientific knowledge from ancient Greek libraries to the Islamic world, culminating in the eighth and ninth centuries (Sabra, 1996; Sabra, 1987) and the subsequent translation and transmission of Islamic scholarly works to Europe during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries further scholarly work is needed. Fortunately various collections of Arabic manuscripts are still preserved in European libraries. Further detailed investigations would help throw light on the critical role of Islamic scholarly works in the development of Renaissance Europe (Saliba, 1999). What is important to note is that the Islamic conception of God (Bausani, 1974) made possible a major advance in scientific thinking during the period of the eighth to the fifteenth centuries in Islamic lands, while Europe lay largely dormant during the Dark Ages. Developments would only appear to have occurred in Europe where there was direct contact with Islamic knowledge in Spain and France, until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Thus the initial development of Modern Science did not occur in Italy with the spectacular work of Galileo, but in the Islamic world several centuries earlier, where it slowly and gradually advanced in ways that have been largely ignored but scholars in Western Europe.