History

Precision and Observation: Refining the Works of Ptolemy After the age of the Ancient Greeks and the end of the Roman Empire, the science of astronomy went into decline in Western Europe. Barbarian incursions and empire building meant that little attention was paid to science and learning, and any such pursuits were limited to monasteries and the homes of nobles. …

The Cedid Atlas (The New Atlas in Ottoman Turkish) was one of the first printed atlases in the Muslim world. It was commissioned by the Ottoman government in 1803 as part of its 19th century reforms to bring the empire up to par with other European powers. All of the maps in the atlas were thus adapted from an earlier …

Coffee About 1,600,000,000 cups of coffee are consumed every day around the world. Billions of people rely on it as part of their daily routines. And yet, very few people are aware of the Muslim origins of this ubiquitous drink. According to the historical record, in the 1400s coffee became a very popular drink among Muslims in Yemen, in the …

The old poem that most American school children recognize begins “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” Indeed, in the year 1492, Christopher Columbus (whose real name in Italian was Cristoforo Colombo) sailed across the Atlantic in the name of the Spanish crown and landed in the Caribbean part of North America. For hundreds of years, it has simply been …