Episode 8: Muslim Inventions that you don’t know about
Are you drinking coffee right now? Perhaps you've just enjoyed a three-course meal or maybe you've had a quick shower. We don't often hear of Muslims being inventors, scientists, or changing the world. What if we told you that modern life as we know and enjoy it would be completely different had it not been for the innovation and knowledge of the Islamic world?
This short video will take a look at some of the things in our modern society that we've never granted today that wouldn't have been possible without some of the cultural practices of Muslims stemming from the Islamic Golden Age.
Coffee was initially discovered in Ethiopia, where an Arab farmer named Khalid noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. The first official record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen, where Muslims drank it to stay awake all night to pray. The word 'coffee' originally derives from the Arabic word 'kahwa.' The Kiva Han was the world's first coffee house in Oakland in 1475 in Constantinople, now known as Istanbul. The coffee house changed Muslim social culture and became a center of social interaction, a place where people would assemble to drink coffee and engage themselves with conversation, music, reading, and playing chess, much like we see today. Soon after, others rapidly emerged all over the city. By the late 15th century, it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey, and in Venice by 1645. It came to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pascal Rose, who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street, London.
As for food, the concept of the three-course meal, soup followed by fish or meat and fruit and nuts, came from Iraq to Cordova in the 9th century.
Praying five times a day meant washing a lot too. Washing and keeping clean is a religious requirement for Muslims for the prayer, which perhaps explains why they perfected the recipe for the soap, which we still use today. The Arabs combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil to create soap. Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Muhammad's Indian Vapor Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed shampooing surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him) popularized the use of the first toothbrush around 600, using a twig from the miswak tree to clean his teeth, a practice that has survived until today. Substances similar to miswak are used in modern toothpaste.
The prayer and the need for punctuality also drove further innovation. By 1206, famous Muslim engineer Al-Jazari had devised some of the first mechanical clocks. He made them of all shapes and sizes driven by water and weights. There had already been a long Muslim tradition of clock making as they knew it was important to know the time for good deeds, such as knowing when to pray and announce the call to prayer in mosques.
A form of chess was played in Ancient India, but the game was developed into the form we know today in Persia. From there, it spread westward into Europe, introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century and eastward as far as Japan. The word 'Rook' comes from the Persian 'Rukh,' which means 'Chariot.'
Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers that originated in Muslim gardens include the Carnation and the Tulip.
We all know the ongoing debate on the permissibility of music in Islam, but did you know that much of the craft of a modern musician is down to the innovative Muslim artists from the 9th century? These artists, Al-Kindi in particular, used musical notation, the system of writing down music. Modern musical scales are also said to derive from the Arabic alphabet: 'da' was 'dal,' 'ray' was 're,' 'me' was 'mim,' and so on.