Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2024 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world

Juan Cole 01/30/2010

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world – CNN.com

Coffee houses, surgical techniques, algrebra, some key institutional developments in universities and hospitals, all from Muslim science. Not to mention optics, astronomical advances (some think they influenced Copernicus), etc.

And those alcoholic stills so popular in Kentucky during Prohibition? Yup, Jabir ibn Hayyan was behind them.

I don’t know if Muslims invented it, but Franz Rosenthal showed that smoking pot was a big part of medieval Muslim popular culture (the Qur’an forbids date wine but doesn’t say anything about pot, though many clerics forbade it by analogy. Like most clerical prohibitions, a lot of people paid no attention.)

End/ (Not Continued)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Donate

Help keep independent journalism alive and donate online, or make checks payable to:
"Juan Cole"
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
(No parcels, please)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

X

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on X

Facebook

Facebook

Follow Informed Comment on Facebook



Popular

  • 'Hell No!': Trump Allies' Plan to Privatize Medicare Draws Alarm and Outrage
  • Biden, tired of being "Genocide Joe," Finally Blinks, will push UN Resolution for Temporary Gaza Ceasefire
  • Brazil's Lula compares Netanyahu to Hitler: How Fascist is Israel's War on Palestinians?
  • Gov. Hochul's Canada Genocide Fantasy and the War of 1812
  • Are there any innocent civilians among Palestinians in Gaza?
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2024 All Rights Reserved

Posting....