- Paperback: 376 pages
- Publisher: FSTC (March 2006)
- Language: English
- Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 9.8 x 1.1 inches
What do coffee beans, torpedoes, surgical scalpels, arches and observatories all have in common? Were Leonardo da Vincis flight ideas originals? Who devised the casing for pill capsules and where did Fibonacci learn to flex his mathematical fingers? All these answers can be found here in 1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World. Over 370 pages of colour photographs and written in an accessible style for those with limited knowledge of either Islam or history. A golden age of civilization, from 600 and 1600 CE, will unfold, because medieval Muslims were trailblazers in fields as diverse as medicine and mechanics, cartography and chemistry, education and engineering, architecture and astronomy. No area was too obscure to miss the scrutiny of enquiry backed up by rigid scientific experimentation. So get comfortable with this guidebook and prepare to begin on a voyage of discovery through a thousand years of science and technology into the lives of medieval pioneers whose ingenious inventions have helped create our world today. "This glorious book overflows with the great ideas of the Muslim middle ages. From al-Jazari and his elegant clocks and al-Kindi and Ibn al-Haitham with their revolutionary optical theories, experiments, and books, to the astronomers who navigated across the desert by the stars, and the map-makers who put north at the bottom, every page is a mine of joyous information. There are even recipes to try out, and everything is beautifully illustrated. I wish I had had this book fifty years ago." Adam Hart-Davis; Photographer, Writer and TV Science Presenter of BBC Series What the Ancients Did for Us
