During ancient times, not a lot of Arabs were educated enough to know how to perform simple calculations in math, for instance. As of today’s generation, we have tools like calculators which help us perform simple calculations in a matter of seconds. Over time, more discoveries were made and Arabs realized that mathematics played an important role in the evolution of science which was advanced thanks to the Muslim scholars that helped deriving certain operations.
For example, Al- Ma’mun gathered some of the Muslim scholars in order to try to derive the approximate circumference of our Earth. Later on it was found that, the approximation given by Al-Ma’mun and his Muslim scholars was so close to the actual circumference of the earth. This shows us that the evolution of science was slowly advancing thanks to the Muslim scholars which always traced a certain path to find their answers (Muslim scholars traced the stars from a certain point in order to obtain the derivation of the Circumference of our earth).
Moving on from the works of Muslim scholars, it was shown that there were two main empires that were involved in the evolution of science before Islam interfered. Saliba, who is one of the most professional writers of Islamic science, mentioned that “The aspect of science before Islam which concerns us here is, therefore, the science of the two major empires of antiquity, plus that of the local tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.” In the Eastern Empire, a crossroad was made for trading and it consisted of different cultures and religions like Persians, Indians, Islam and Christianity. This shows that the mixing of all these different beliefs and cultures play an important role since they are trying to interact with one another which makes them feel like one group. One of Islam’s main focus is treating others equally to make the world a better place, rather than judging others because of their different religions and cultures.
Furthermore, In Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, we have something called “The house of wisdom” and this was classified as a library, that couldn’t be accessed by the public, for Al-Mansur, who founded Baghdad. Soon, the translation movement, which began with texts in Persian that of both astronomy and astrology, showed us that astrology was more beneficial since it related to the stars which helped scholars during their discoveries. Another example for why astrology appeared to be more beneficial is because it resulted in helping the fellow Muslims with the official time for mosques. In addition, the translation movement resulted in Islamic colleges in which each college had a library which helped people learn more by reading the books present.
The house of wisdom consists of many different categories of books present hence, some philosophers derived the basic laws of physics while others wanted to focus on optics. Therefore, it can be said that science had a huge impact on the Muslims since when Islamic science emerged a lot of operations became clearer which led to it being accessed by the public in order for them to educate themselves more.