Articles From Our Experts

Ptolemaic astronomy became known in mediaeval Europe mainly through translations from Arabic. Latin translations of the Almagest reflect the complex tradition of Ptolemy in the Arab world and show the translators' individual approaches to a demanding and unfamiliar science.

The sources of the British Library’s Arabic scientific manuscripts are many and various. Here we discover an individual who contributed to the collection and lived an adventurous life in London and the Middle East.

Common household practices such as consuming hot soups and drinks when one has caught a cold are rooted in humoral medicine, which was the dominant medical paradigm from the time of Galen to the nineteenth century (and beyond) across much of the world.

In AD 137, Ptolemy compiled a catalogue of forty-eight constellations containing 1022 stars. ʽAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī revised critically Ptolemy’s catalogue, added new stars and identified those appearing in the Arabic folk tradition.

In the medieval and early modern periods, the same group of individuals who developed new mathematical methods and theories were often directly involved in the historical, philological preservation of ancient texts.

Salim Rashid Suri, an Omani ṣawt singer and oud player became famous as the ‘singing sailor’ and for developing a truly unique style, which took influence from musical sources across the Middle East and India.

The peoples of the Islamic world excelled at designing and building water-clocks as these manuscripts show.

How did an illustrated Arabic manuscript on the Art of War come into the possession of an illegitimate son of a King; his extraordinary and ultimately tragic life leading to its acquisition by the British Library?

An enormous effort was made to translate almost all known Greek literature into Arabic during the 8th to 10th centuries, and Baghdad was at the centre of this work. Why was it that so many of the translators were Christians?

During a period often characterised as one of decay and decline, the Andaluso-Tunisian astronomer Ibn al-Raqqām wrote his Risālah fī ‘ilm al-ẓilāl, the most important treatise on sundials of the Islamic West. The instruments he describes are much more elaborate and sophisticated than the surviving examples of Medieval sundials from al-Andalus and the Maghrib.

For eight hundred years, the Arabic scientific tradition was superior to that found in western Eurasia. It gave birth to new theories and fields of scientific inquiry that laid the foundations for the Scientific Revolution, and continued to flourish thereafter.

When and where did the sciences practised in the Islamic world during the so-called Golden Age originate?

A vast range of material that spans several thousand years, including a large collection of Arabic manuscripts and material related to the Gulf, is held in the British Library collection.

Today’s leaders look to their medical, economic, military, and other expert advisers, but historically rulers have also consulted astrologers, dream-interpreters, and specialists in other forms of divination and occult sciences.

Astrology was considered a scientific discipline in the Middle Ages, when political powers patronised astronomical research that was considered necessary for obtaining ‘scientific’ astrological predictions.

al-Bīrūnī’s Qānūn is the most complete astronomical encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. It represents the most successful attempt to correct and rewrite Ptolemy’s Almagest, and was based on the results of three centuries of research in Islamic lands.

‘Islamic’ and ‘Western’ are terms used to describe different styles of binding but experts agree that much further research is required to create more meaningful categories.