15 Muslim Inventions and Discoveries that Reshaped the World

[Umair Malik]

10 – Crankshaft

Crankshaft was discovered in 12th century by an ingenious Muslim engineer called Al-Jazari.

It is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, making its way from a bicycle to the internal combustion engine.

It is known as the most important mechanical inventions in the history of mankind.

Al-Jazari wanted to raise water for irrigation and thus he invented crankshaft. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.

[Umair Malik]

11 – Earth Is a Sphere

By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth was a sphere. Astronomer Ibn Hazm as a proof said that, “the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth” due to which it must be in sphere shape.

It was 500 years before that realization dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth’s circumference to be 40, 253.4km – less than 200km out.

[Umair Malik]

12 – Fountain pen

On the demand of sultan of Egypt, the fountain pen was invented in 953. As he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes and a pen which didn’t needed an inkpot with it, instead it should carry the ink in its body.

Later a fountain pen was designed. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.

[Umair Malik]

13 – Pay cheques

The modern cheque comes from the Arab as trading was a very famous profession of that time, In the 9th century, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered was developed by a Muslim businessman, So that anyone could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.

This was done in order to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain because it might get robbed in the way.

[Umair Malik]

14 – Shampoo

Washing and bathing are religious practice and is a requirement for Muslims to pray, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. Hazrat Saalih (A.S) is known to have invented soap as we know today.

The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil.

Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed’s Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV.

[Umair Malik]

15 – Parachute

A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make real attempts to construct a flying machine and fly.

In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn’t. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first “parachute”, and leaving him with only minor injuries.

But his dreams of flying couldn’t let him sleep in peace for which, In 875 at the age of 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles’ feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. This time he designed a winged apparatus, roughly resembling a bird costume. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for about ten minutes but crashed on landing, later it was concluded that it happened because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing.

His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci’s hundreds of years later.

Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.