1.
Science and technology in Iran
–
Iran has made considerable advances in science and technology through education and training, despite international sanctions in almost all aspects of research during the past 30 years. Irans university population swelled from 100,000 in 1979 to 2 million in 2006, 70% of its science and engineering students are women. Irans scientific progress is reported to be the fastest in the world, Iran has made great strides in different sectors, including aerospace, nuclear science, medical development, as well as stem cell and cloning research. Persia was a cradle of science in earlier times, contributing to medicine, mathematics, science, trying to revive the golden time of Persian science, Irans scientists now are cautiously reaching out to the world. Many individual Iranian scientists, along with the Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences, Science in Persia evolved in two main phases separated by the arrival and widespread adoption of Islam in the region. References to scientific subjects such as science and mathematics occur in books written in the Pahlavi languages. The Qanat originated in pre-Achaemenid Persia, the oldest and largest known qanat is in the Iranian city of Gonabad, which, after 2,700 years, still provides drinking and agricultural water to nearly 40,000 people. Persian philosophers and inventors may have created the first batteries in the Parthian or Sassanid eras, some have suggested that the batteries may have been used medicinally. Windwheels were developed by the Babylonians ca.1700 BC to pump water for irrigation, in the 7th century, Persian engineers in Greater Iran developed a more advanced wind-power machine, the windmill, building upon the basic model developed by the Babylonians. The 9th century mathematician Muhammad Ibn Musa-al-Kharazmi created the Logarithm table, developed algebra and his writings were translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona under the title, De jebra et almucabola. Robert of Chester also translated it under the title Liber algebras et almucabala, the works of Kharazmi exercised a profound influence on the development of mathematical thought in the medieval West. The practice and study of medicine in Iran has a long, situated at the crossroads of the East and West, Persia was often involved in developments in ancient Greek and Indian medicine, pre- and post-Islamic Iran have been involved in medicine as well. For example, the first teaching hospital where medical students methodically practiced on patients under the supervision of physicians was the Academy of Gundishapur in the Persian Empire. Some experts go so far as to claim that, to a large extent. The idea of xenotransplantation dates to the days of Achaemenidae, as evidenced by engravings of many mythologic chimeras still present in Persepolis, several documents still exist from which the definitions and treatments of the headache in medieval Persia can be ascertained. These documents give detailed and precise information on the different types of headaches. The medieval physicians listed various signs and symptoms, apparent causes, the medieval writings are both accurate and vivid, and they provide long lists of substances used in the treatment of headaches. Many of the approaches of physicians in medieval Persia are accepted today, however, although largely mythical in content, the passage illustrates working knowledge of anesthesia in ancient Persia
2.
Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi
–
Mosleh Shirazi was a 13th-century Persian polymath and poet who made contributions to astronomy, mathematics, medicine, physics, music theory, philosophy and Sufism. He was born in Kazerun in October 1236 to a family with a tradition of Sufism and his father, Zia al-Din Masud Kazeruni was a physician by profession and also a leading Sufi of the Kazeruni order. Zia Al-Din received his Kherqa from Shahab al-Din Omar Suhrawardi, Qutb al-Din was garbed by the Kherqa as blessing by his father at age of ten. Later on, he received his own robe from the hands of Najib al-Din Bozgush Shirazni. Quṭb al-Din began studying medicine under his father and his father practiced and taught medicine at the Mozaffari hospital in Shiraz. After the passing away of his father, his uncle and other masters of the period trained him in medicine and he also studied the Qanun of the famous Persian scholar Avicenna and its commentaries. In particular he read the commentary of Fakhr al-Din Razi on the Canon of Medicine and this led to his own decision to write his own commentary, where he resolved many of the issues in the company of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Qutb al-Din lost his father at the age of fourteen and replaced him as the ophthalmologist at the Mozaffari hospital in Shiraz, at the same time, he pursued his education under his uncle Kamal al-Din Abul Khayr and then Sharaf al-Din Zaki Bushkani, and Shams al-Din Mohammad Kishi. All three were teachers of the Canon of Avicenna. He quit his medical profession ten years later and began to devote his time to education under the guidance of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. When Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, the renowned scholar-vizier of the Mongol Holagu Khan established the observatory of Maragha and he left Shiraz sometime after 1260 and was in Maragha about 1262. In Maragha, Qutb al-din resumed his education under Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and he discussed the difficulties he had with Nasir al-Din al-Tusi on understanding the first book of the Canon of Avicenna. While working in the new observatory, studied astronomy under him, one of the important scientific projects was the completion of the new astronomical table. In his testament, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi advises his son ṣil-a-Din to work with Qutb al-Din in the completion of the Zij, qutb-al-Dins stay in Maragha was short. Subsequently, he traveled to Khorasan in the company of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi where he stayed to study under Najm al-Din Katebi Qazvini in the town of Jovayn, some time after 1268, he journeyed to Qazvin, Isfahan, Baghdad and later Konya in Anatolia. This was a time when the Persian poet Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi was gaining fame there, in Konya, he studied the Jame al-Osul of Ibn Al-Athir with Sadr al-Din Qunawi. The governor of Konya, Moin al-Din Parvana appointed him as the judge of Sivas and it was during this time that he compiled the books the Meftāḥ al-meftāh, Ekhtiārāt al-moẓaffariya, and his commentary on Sakkāki. In the year 1282, he was envoy on behalf of the Ilkhanid Ahmad Takudar to Sayf al-Din Qalawun, in his letter to Qalawun, the Ilkhanid ruler mentions Qutb al-Din as the chief judge
3.
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi
–
Khawaja Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tūsī, better known as Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, theologian and Marja Taqleed. He was of the Twelver Shī‘ah Islamic belief, the Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars. Nasir al-Din Tusi was born in the city of Tus in medieval Khorasan in the year 1201, in Hamadan and Tus he studied the Quran, Hadith, Shia jurisprudence, logic, philosophy, mathematics, medicine and astronomy. He was apparently born into a Shī‘ah family and lost his father at a young age, at a young age he moved to Nishapur to study philosophy under Farid al-Din Damad and mathematics under Muhammad Hasib. He met also Farid al-Din Attar, the legendary Sufi master who was killed by Mongol invaders. In Mosul he studied mathematics and astronomy with Kamal al-Din Yunus and he was captured after the invasion of the Alamut castle by the Mongol forces. Tusi has about 150 works, of which 25 are in Persian and the remaining are in Arabic, here are some of his major works, Kitāb al-Shakl al-qattāʴ Book on the complete quadrilateral. A five volume summary of trigonometry, al-Tadhkirah fiilm al-hayah – A memoir on the science of astronomy. Many commentaries were written about this work called Sharh al-Tadhkirah - Commentaries were written by Abd al-Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Birjandi, akhlaq-i Nasiri – A work on ethics. Al-Risalah al-Asturlabiyah – A Treatise on astrolabe, Zij-i ilkhani – A major astronomical treatise, completed in 1272. Sharh al-isharat Awsaf al-Ashraf a short work in Persian Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād – A commentary on Shia doctrines. During his stay in Nishapur, Tusi established a reputation as an exceptional scholar, tusi’s prose writing, which number over 150 works, represent one of the largest collections by a single Islamic author. Writing in both Arabic and Persian, Nasir al-Din Tusi dealt with religious topics and non-religious or secular subjects. His works include the definitive Arabic versions of the works of Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Autolycus, Tusi convinced Hulegu Khan to construct an observatory for establishing accurate astronomical tables for better astrological predictions. Beginning in 1259, the Rasad Khaneh observatory was constructed in Azarbaijan, south of the river Aras, and to the west of Maragheh, the capital of the Ilkhanate Empire. Based on the observations in this for the time being most advanced observatory and this book contains astronomical tables for calculating the positions of the planets and the names of the stars. His model for the system is believed to be the most advanced of his time. Between Ptolemy and Copernicus, he is considered by many to be one of the most eminent astronomers of his time, for his planetary models, he invented a geometrical technique called a Tusi-couple, which generates linear motion from the sum of two circular motions
4.
Ibn al-Haytham
–
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham, also known by the Latinization Alhazen or Alhacen, was an Arab Muslim scientist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher. Ibn al-Haytham made significant contributions to the principles of optics, astronomy, mathematics and he was the first to explain that vision occurs when light bounces on an object and then is directed to ones eyes. He spent most of his close to the court of the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo and earned his living authoring various treatises. In medieval Europe, Ibn al-Haytham was honored as Ptolemaeus Secundus or simply called The Physicist and he is also sometimes called al-Baṣrī after his birthplace Basra in Iraq, or al-Miṣrī. Ibn al-Haytham was born c.965 in Basra, which was part of the Buyid emirate. Alhazen arrived in Cairo under the reign of Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim, Alhazen continued to live in Cairo, in the neighborhood of the famous University of al-Azhar, until his death in 1040. Legend has it that after deciding the scheme was impractical and fearing the caliphs anger, during this time, he wrote his influential Book of Optics and continued to write further treatises on astronomy, geometry, number theory, optics and natural philosophy. Among his students were Sorkhab, a Persian from Semnan who was his student for three years, and Abu al-Wafa Mubashir ibn Fatek, an Egyptian prince who learned mathematics from Alhazen. Alhazen made significant contributions to optics, number theory, geometry, astronomy, Alhazens work on optics is credited with contributing a new emphasis on experiment. In al-Andalus, it was used by the prince of the Banu Hud dynasty of Zaragossa and author of an important mathematical text. A Latin translation of the Kitab al-Manazir was made probably in the twelfth or early thirteenth century. His research in catoptrics centred on spherical and parabolic mirrors and spherical aberration and he made the observation that the ratio between the angle of incidence and refraction does not remain constant, and investigated the magnifying power of a lens. His work on catoptrics also contains the known as Alhazens problem. Alhazen wrote as many as 200 books, although only 55 have survived, some of his treatises on optics survived only through Latin translation. During the Middle Ages his books on cosmology were translated into Latin, Hebrew, the crater Alhazen on the Moon is named in his honour, as was the asteroid 59239 Alhazen. In honour of Alhazen, the Aga Khan University named its Ophthalmology endowed chair as The Ibn-e-Haitham Associate Professor, Alhazen, by the name Ibn al-Haytham, is featured on the obverse of the Iraqi 10, 000-dinar banknote issued in 2003, and on 10-dinar notes from 1982. The 2015 International Year of Light celebrated the 1000th anniversary of the works on optics by Ibn Al-Haytham, Alhazens most famous work is his seven-volume treatise on optics Kitab al-Manazir, written from 1011 to 1021. Optics was translated into Latin by a scholar at the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th century
5.
Persian language
–
Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
6.
Persian people
–
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group that make up over half the population of Iran. They share a cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the ancient Iranian population who entered modern-day Iran by the early 10th century BC. The English term Persian derives from Latin Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís, in the Bible, it is referred to as Parás —sometimes Paras uMadai —within the books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemya. Although Persis was originally one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term were adopted through Greek sources, thus, in the Western world, the term Persian came to refer to all inhabitants of the country. 10th-century Iraqi historian Al-Masudi refers to Pahlavi, Dari and Azari as dialects of the Persian language, in 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta, referred to the people of Kabul as a specific sub-tribe of Persians. Lady Mary Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, describes Persians, Kurds and Leks to identify themselves as descendants of the ancient Persians. On March 21,1935, the king of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran. However, the term Persian is still used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent. The earliest known written record attributed to the Persians is from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the inscription mentions Parsua as a tribal chiefdom in modern-day western Iran. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the Iranian population that, in the early 10th century BC. They were initially dominated by the Assyrians for much of the first three centuries after arriving in the region, however, they played a role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another branch of population, founded the unified empire of Media as the regions dominant cultural and political power in c.625 BC. Meanwhile, the Persian dynasty of the Achaemenids formed a state to the central Median power. In c.552 BC, the Achaemenids began a revolution which led to the conquest of the empire by Cyrus II in c.550 BC. They spread their influence to the rest of what is called the Iranian Plateau, at its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the creation of Pasargadae and its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, even for centuries after the withdrawal of the Persians from Europe following the Greco-Persian Wars. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, until the Parthian era, the Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value, however, it did not yet have a political import
7.
Muslim
–
A Muslim is someone who follows or practices Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion. Muslims consider the Quran, their book, to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet. They also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad as recorded in traditional accounts, Muslim is an Arabic word meaning one who submits. Most Muslims will accept anyone who has publicly pronounced Shahadah as a Muslim, the shahadah states, There is no god but the God and Muhammad is the last messenger of the God. The testimony authorized by God in the Quran that can found in Surah 3,18 states, There is no god except God, which in Arabic, is the exact testimony which God Himself utters, as well as the angels and those who possess knowledge utter. The word muslim is the active participle of the verb of which islām is a verbal noun, based on the triliteral S-L-M to be whole. A female adherent is a muslima, the plural form in Arabic is muslimūn or muslimīn, and its feminine equivalent is muslimāt. The Arabic form muslimun is the stem IV participle of the triliteral S-L-M, the ordinary word in English is Muslim. It is sometimes transliterated as Moslem, which is an older spelling, the word Mosalman is a common equivalent for Muslim used in Central Asia. Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term Mohammedans or Mahometans, although such terms were not necessarily intended to be pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship Muhammad rather than God. Other obsolete terms include Muslimite and Muslimist, musulmán/Mosalmán is a synonym for Muslim and is modified from Arabic. In English it was sometimes spelled Mussulman and has become archaic in usage, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Arabi said, A Muslim is a person who has dedicated his worship exclusively to God. Islam means making ones religion and faith Gods alone. The Quran states that men were Muslims because they submitted to God, preached His message and upheld His values. Thus, in Surah 3,52 of the Quran, Jesus disciples tell him, We believe in God, and you be our witness that we are Muslims. In Muslim belief, before the Quran, God had given the Tawrat to Moses, the Zabur to David and the Injil to Jesus, who are all considered important Muslim prophets. The most populous Muslim-majority country is Indonesia, home to 12. 7% of the worlds Muslims, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt. About 20% of the worlds Muslims lives in the Middle East and North Africa, Sizable minorities are found in India, China, Russia, Ethiopia. The country with the highest proportion of self-described Muslims as a proportion of its population is Morocco
8.
Optics
–
Optics is the branch of physics which involves the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light, because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties. Most optical phenomena can be accounted for using the classical description of light. Complete electromagnetic descriptions of light are, however, often difficult to apply in practice, practical optics is usually done using simplified models. The most common of these, geometric optics, treats light as a collection of rays that travel in straight lines, physical optics is a more comprehensive model of light, which includes wave effects such as diffraction and interference that cannot be accounted for in geometric optics. Historically, the model of light was developed first, followed by the wave model of light. Progress in electromagnetic theory in the 19th century led to the discovery that waves were in fact electromagnetic radiation. Some phenomena depend on the fact that light has both wave-like and particle-like properties, explanation of these effects requires quantum mechanics. When considering lights particle-like properties, the light is modelled as a collection of particles called photons, quantum optics deals with the application of quantum mechanics to optical systems. Optical science is relevant to and studied in many related disciplines including astronomy, various engineering fields, photography, practical applications of optics are found in a variety of technologies and everyday objects, including mirrors, lenses, telescopes, microscopes, lasers, and fibre optics. Optics began with the development of lenses by the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, the earliest known lenses, made from polished crystal, often quartz, date from as early as 700 BC for Assyrian lenses such as the Layard/Nimrud lens. The ancient Romans and Greeks filled glass spheres with water to make lenses, the word optics comes from the ancient Greek word ὀπτική, meaning appearance, look. Greek philosophy on optics broke down into two opposing theories on how vision worked, the theory and the emission theory. The intro-mission approach saw vision as coming from objects casting off copies of themselves that were captured by the eye, plato first articulated the emission theory, the idea that visual perception is accomplished by rays emitted by the eyes. He also commented on the parity reversal of mirrors in Timaeus, some hundred years later, Euclid wrote a treatise entitled Optics where he linked vision to geometry, creating geometrical optics. Ptolemy, in his treatise Optics, held a theory of vision, the rays from the eye formed a cone, the vertex being within the eye. The rays were sensitive, and conveyed back to the observer’s intellect about the distance. He summarised much of Euclid and went on to describe a way to measure the angle of refraction, during the Middle Ages, Greek ideas about optics were resurrected and extended by writers in the Muslim world
9.
Number theory
–
Number theory or, in older usage, arithmetic is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers. It is sometimes called The Queen of Mathematics because of its place in the discipline. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of objects out of integers or defined as generalizations of the integers. Integers can be considered either in themselves or as solutions to equations, questions in number theory are often best understood through the study of analytical objects that encode properties of the integers, primes or other number-theoretic objects in some fashion. One may also study real numbers in relation to rational numbers, the older term for number theory is arithmetic. By the early century, it had been superseded by number theory. The use of the arithmetic for number theory regained some ground in the second half of the 20th century. In particular, arithmetical is preferred as an adjective to number-theoretic. The first historical find of a nature is a fragment of a table. The triples are too many and too large to have been obtained by brute force, the heading over the first column reads, The takiltum of the diagonal which has been subtracted such that the width. The tables layout suggests that it was constructed by means of what amounts, in language, to the identity 2 +1 =2. If some other method was used, the triples were first constructed and then reordered by c / a, presumably for use as a table. It is not known what these applications may have been, or whether there could have any, Babylonian astronomy, for example. It has been suggested instead that the table was a source of examples for school problems. While Babylonian number theory—or what survives of Babylonian mathematics that can be called thus—consists of this single, striking fragment, late Neoplatonic sources state that Pythagoras learned mathematics from the Babylonians. Much earlier sources state that Thales and Pythagoras traveled and studied in Egypt, Euclid IX 21—34 is very probably Pythagorean, it is very simple material, but it is all that is needed to prove that 2 is irrational. Pythagorean mystics gave great importance to the odd and the even, the discovery that 2 is irrational is credited to the early Pythagoreans. This forced a distinction between numbers, on the one hand, and lengths and proportions, on the other hand, the Pythagorean tradition spoke also of so-called polygonal or figurate numbers
