The Arab civilisation then and now

[LaBong]

I haven't gone through the whole article but I'm sure they are claiming Indian numeral as Arabic numeral.

 

[The SC]

When you study in the US, there is a mandatory class that you have to take and it is called: The Western civilisation.
The first thing you will learn in it, is that Greece is its (mother) founder.
A total lie if we consider the state of Europe at which the Muslim civilisation found it, it was called the dark ages.
So, no wonder that the western "civilisation" prefers the dark ages, it just can not face its day to day realities and try to project all looking and inquiring eyes from its own populace as well as from others "fascinated" by its "achievements", and divert them towards some "hot spots" it has created elsewhere...

 

[Solomon2]

A total lie if we consider the state of Europe at which the Muslim civilisation found it, it was called the dark ages.

"Dark Ages" is a sloppy term and your statement is too generalized. Early Islam came into contact with Europe at three points: Constantinople, the most civilized city on Earth, which long resisted it; Southern Italy where local government and living standards were repeatedly ruined through Muslims piratical raids, and Spain where a highly organized society existed that was so oppressive that minorities encouraged and assisted Muslim invaders at every turn.

The Byzantines never lost their Greek traditions and once the Muslims conquered Sicily and Spain Europe was primed to recover the Greek heritage that a decayed Rome had neglected and the Vandals destroyed.

 

[The SC]

I haven't gone through the whole article but I'm sure they are claiming Indian numeral as Arabic numeral.

This was fully explained in another thread.
India had the zero numeral but couldn't use it and didn't know how either nor did or could the Europeans and others, the Arabs were the only ones with the know how.
The Arab numerals are geometric figures about angles, and the the other type that India claims as its own were written in Arabic language.
India had some numbers written in some language that resembled the Arabic ones, I have even shown photos and extensive evidences of these facts.

"Dark Ages" is a sloppy term and your statement is too generalized. Early Islam came into contact with Europe at three points: Constantinople, the most civilized city on Earth, which long resisted it; Southern Italy where local government and living standards were repeatedly ruined through Muslims piratical raids, and Spain where a highly organized society existed that was so oppressive that minorities encouraged and assisted Muslim invaders at every turn.

The Byzantines never lost their Greek traditions and once the Muslims conquered Sicily and Spain Europe was primed to recover the Greek heritage that a decayed Rome had neglected and the Vandals destroyed.

You do say it yourself, but contradict yourself too, a highly organized society and oppressive!
You forgot the plague!!!
and we have already talked about the Greeks and their "civilisation".

 

[The SC]

Are you referring to me? When I said that modern day Egyptians or North Africans are Arabs, I meant that they are Arabs only because they speak Arabic in modern times. Arabs are a language, not a race. Geographical Arabia is only the Arabian peninsula, Egypt & the rest of north Africa is not part of the Arabian peninsula.

Even the Berbers of north Africa called tamazight, were originally from Yemen in a place called tamazigh or amazigh, so they were from the Arabic peninsula, they still exist today from Morocco to Egypt, so by all means ancient Egyptians formed a big part of what was to become Arabia.

 

[The SC]

Are you referring to me? When I said that modern day Egyptians or North Africans are Arabs, I meant that they are Arabs only because they speak Arabic in modern times. Arabs are a language, not a race. Geographical Arabia is only the Arabian peninsula, Egypt & the rest of north Africa is not part of the Arabian peninsula.

There is no such thing like "Arabs are a language"; Arabic is the language spoken by the Arabs today, before it was Aramaic and before that many other languages.
When you speak about race, species and families, you should remember that as far as humans are concerned, there is only one human race and different groups of people forming it, with different skin colours as the ultimate difference, with no species in it nor related to other family of animals.

 

[Desert Fox]

There is no such thing like "Arabs are a language"; Arabic is the language spoken by the Arabs today, before it was Aramaic and before that many other languages.
When you speak about race, species and families, you should remember that as far as humans are concerned, there is only one human race and different groups of people forming it, with different skin colours as the ultimate difference, with no species in it nor related to other family of animals.

But the generally accepted and most common definition of race is with regards to distinct physical features.

 

[LaBong]

This was fully explained in another thread.
India had the zero numeral but couldn't use it and didn't know how either nor did or could the Europeans and others, the Arabs were the only ones with the know how.
The Arab numerals are geometric figures about angles, and the the other type that India claims as its own were written in Arabic language.
India had some numbers written in some language that resembled the Arabic ones, I have even shown photos and extensive evidences of these facts.



You do say it yourself, but contradict yourself too, a highly organized society and oppressive!
You forgot the plague!!!
and we have already talked about the Greeks and their "civilisation".

No brahmi numerals were in use since 500 ca, although they used separate numbers as placeholders for 10,100 etc. It was in 7th century brahmagupta figured out the use of zero.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_numeral

India numerals reached Arab through persia and Europe through Arab traders, that's why it was known as Arab numerals in Europe.

 

[The SC]

I am certain that some members are only supporting the ancient Egyptians for the reasons stated previously. You might be an exception to that. Give credit where credit is due, the ancient Greeks did make many contributions to the world. Sure they learnt & borrowed from others, but all civilizations did that, including the Islamic civilization.

In other words, what you basically want is that the Western world should forget about its own accomplishments & focus on & take pride in the eastern world alone, right?

Inventions and Discoveries of Ancient Greek Scientists

nothing is really new in the article, it says the same things we were saying before and gives a little credit to the Greeks for their efforts to understand; all the inventions mentioned in the article are older than the existence of the Greeks.
Philosophy is the mother of mathematics, and practical mathematics were there in Egypt before the Greeks started philosophizing, meaning that sophisticated philosophy was existent before, otherwise the ancient Egyptians wouldn't have had practical advanced mathematics per se. it is just a question of logic (from philosophy and mathematics again!).

 

[The SC]

But the generally accepted and most common definition of race is with regards to distinct physical features.

So than there are 4 different races, there is a white race, a black race, a yellow race and a red race in humans, are you happy now !!!?
If you are talking about any other features, you can find them in humans everywhere on earth too.
So, since most people acknowledge humans as "the human race", I think this question should be addressed at Educational institutions worldwide to correct the falsely accepted definition of race, it just stems from self contradiction and ignorance.

 

[The SC]

No brahmi numerals were in use since 500 ca, although they used separate numbers as placeholders for 10,100 etc. It was in 7th century brahmagupta figured out the use of zero.

Brahmi numerals - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

India numerals reached Arab through persia and Europe through Arab traders, that's why it was known as Arab numerals in Europe.

Or might have been the other way around, a strong possibility, since it is the Arabs who went to commerce with the Indians and not the other way around.
I still remember from other studies that the Indian calculations were too cumbersome and not practical in daily life and that the zero was indeed an Arab invention that was called the Sefr from which the term sipher was derived.
They were the first to have used it in calculations, the Indians knew about it but their calculus and the European(Roman empire) one was very limited, since they had a reverse method of the actual method developed by the Arabs and probably by their ancestors from the ancient civilisations of the area., there is also the development of algebra or Al Jabr in Arabic that formed a corner stone of modern mathematics.

There is also something very strange about the Indian numbers you are showing; as soon as the zero appears, it starts showing some Greek alphabet with it:
Alpha for 10, Sigma for 100 and Ru for 1000. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is Greek related to Sanskrit ?

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

Even the Berbers of north Africa called tamazight, were originally from Yemen in a place called tamazigh or amazigh, so they were from the Arabic peninsula, they still exist today from Morocco to Egypt, so by all means ancient Egyptians formed a big part of what was to become Arabia.

I really don't care about the origins of the Berbers. From what I know, they are indigenous to North Africa though some of them may have roots in the Middle East, especially in Phoenicia, since in the past many people from from Phoenicia traveled to North Africa.

You can refer to the source below too.

Berber people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is no such thing like "Arabs are a language"; Arabic is the language spoken by the Arabs today, before it was Aramaic and before that many other languages.
When you speak about race, species and families, you should remember that as far as humans are concerned, there is only one human race and different groups of people forming it, with different skin colours as the ultimate difference, with no species in it nor related to other family of animals.

A man once visited the Prophet's mosque in Madinah. There he saw a group of people sitting and discussing their faith together. Among them were Salman (who came from Persia), Suhayb who grew up in the Eastern Roman empire and was regarded as a Greek, and Bilal who was an African. The man then said:

"If the (Madinan) tribes of Aws and Khazraj support Muhammad, they are his people (that is, Arabs like him). But what are these people doing here?"

The Prophet became very angry when this was reported to him. Straightaway, he went to the mosque and summoned people to a Salat. He then addressed them saying:

"O people, know that the Lord and Sustainer is One. Your ancestor is one, your faith is one. The Arabism of anyone of you is not from your mother or father. It is no more than a tongue (language). Whoever speaks Arabic is an Arab."

Source

The ancestors of modern Arabs did speak languages other than Arabic as their mother tongue, that is the reason they never referred to themselves as Arabs. Their descendants however are Arabs mainly because they speak Arabic.

Humans are a species, & another member has already commented upon your odd claim of there being no races. The differences between us are certainly greater than skin color. You lost most of your credibility when you said that Arabs were Aryans, & your attempts at linking the word Aryan with the word "Arab" or as I remember the word "Arabyan" were extremely hilarious.

There is no need for people to forget about or destroy their differences to tolerate each other. Humans must learn to live together peacefully by respecting & tolerating each other's differences.

An example will illustrate my point.

Even though we now know that the Babylonians used the mathematical concept centuries before Pythagoras wrote down his theorem, it won't change anything. It will remain Pythagoras' Theorem because it is his works which form the basis of Western, and global, science today. It doesn't take anything away from Pythagoras, but it does provide context to the claim of being the "first" to do something.

You might find these links interesting:

Pythagorean theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Babylonian Pythagoras

What exactly is the problem with the mathematical concept's name remaining as Pythogaras's theorem? After all it is Pythoagaras's work due to which most of the world learnt about this mathematical concept. The Babylonians may have known about it earlier, but there is no proof of Pythogaras stealing this knowledge from them. Besides, as far as I know, the Babylonians did not teach the world about this mathematical concept. I remember reading that the modern day "Arabic" numerals, already existed in Sanskrit. The only reason they are referred to as "Arabic" numerals is because the Arabs introduced them to the Europeans. Sure, some people refer to them as the "Hindu-Arabic" numerals, but the common name is still "Arabic" numerals. Is this in your opinion another case of credit not being given where it is due?

The point made earlier about Western sources being biased & not giving credit where credit is due has been refuted in these cases. There has been no attempt whatsoever at concealing the accomplishments of other civilizations.

 

[LaBong]

Or might have been the other way around, a strong possibility, since it is the Arabs who went to commerce with the Indians and not the other way around.
I still remember from other studies that the Indian calculations were too cumbersome and not practical in daily life and that the zero was indeed an Arab invention that was called the Sefr from which the term sipher was derived.
They were the first to have used it in calculations, the Indians knew about it but their calculus and the European(Roman empire) one was very limited, since they had a reverse method of the actual method developed by the Arabs and probably by their ancestors from the ancient civilisations of the area., there is also the development of algebra or Al Jabr in Arabic that formed a corner stone of modern mathematics.

Why it might have been other way around when what was known as Arab numerals in Europe, was called Hindu numerals in Arab.

Indian Mathematicians composed books on arithmetic, algebra, plane trigonometry, and spherical trigonometry. It also contains continued fractions, quadratic equations, sums-of-power series, and a table of sines back in 500CA.

The place-value system, first seen in the 3rd century Bakhshali Manuscript, was clearly in place in his work. While he did not use a symbol for zero, the French mathematician Georges Ifrah explains that knowledge of zero was implicit in Aryabhata's place-value system as a place holder for the powers of ten with null coefficients.

Aryabhata worked on the approximation for pi (\pi), and may have come to the conclusion that \pi is irrational. In the second part of the Aryabhatiyam (gaṇitapāda 10), he writes:

caturadhikam śatamaṣṭaguṇam dvāṣaṣṭistathā sahasrāṇām
ayutadvayaviṣkambhasyāsanno vṛttapariṇāhaḥ.
"Add four to 100, multiply by eight, and then add 62,000. By this rule the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 20,000 can be approached."

In Ganitapada 6, Aryabhata gives the area of a triangle as

tribhujasya phalashariram samadalakoti bhujardhasamvargah

that translates to: "for a triangle, the result of a perpendicular with the half-side is the area."

In Aryabhatiya Aryabhata provided elegant results for the summation of series of squares and cubes:

Brahmagupta derived the formula to calculate area of any cyclic quadrilateral (one that can be inscribed in a circle) given the lengths of the sides.

Talking about Algebra. Here's something for you.

The modern system of numeration is based on place value, with the same symbol, such as 4, taking on different meaning (4, 40, 400, etc.) depending on its location within the representation of the number. Place value notation was used long ago in Babylonian cuneiform numerals, but our modern decimal place value system was invented by Hindu mathematicians in India, probably by the sixth century and perhaps even earlier. The modern numerals 1, 2, 3, ..., are sometimes called "Arabic" numerals in the West because they were introduced to Europeans by Arab merchants. The key figure was the great Persian mathematician Muhammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, who taught at Baghdad sometime between 800 and 850. He wrote a book on the Hindu number system known today only in a later Latin translation as De numero indorum, "On the Hindu numbers." Subsequently he wrote a longer and very influential work, Al-jabr w'al muqabalah, known in Europe as Algebra, which included all the techniques of arithmetic still taught in schools today. The author's name, Latinized as "Algorismus," is the root of the English word "algorithm".

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/roman.html

 

[Developereo]

You might find these links interesting:

Pythagorean theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Babylonian Pythagoras

What exactly is the problem with the mathematical concept's name remaining as Pythogaras's theorem? After all it is Pythoagaras's work due to which most of the world learnt about this mathematical concept. The Babylonians may have known about it earlier, but there is no proof of Pythogaras stealing this knowledge from them. Besides, as far as I know, the Babylonians did not teach the world about this mathematical concept.

Read my post again. That is exactly what I wrote.

I remember reading that the modern day "Arabic" numerals, already existed in Sanskrit. The only reason they are referred to as "Arabic" numerals is because the Arabs introduced them to the Europeans. Sure, some people refer to them as the "Hindu-Arabic" numerals, but the common name is still "Arabic" numerals. Is this in your opinion another case of credit not being given where it is due?

The point made earlier about Western sources being biased & not giving credit where credit is due has been refuted in these cases. There has been no attempt whatsoever at concealing the accomplishments of other civilizations.

Nonsense. Western historian routinely downplay or completely ignore the accomplishments of Muslim (Arab and Persian) scholars. Many of the core concepts in modern optics, medicine and others are due to Muslim scholars but you would never hear it in Western school curricula. The Hindu accomplishments on mathematics are acknowledged by Western historians only because that takes away from Arab claims. The amount of visceral hatred of Muslims and Arabs that permeates Western scholarship through the ages can only be appreciated by reading some of these "historians" and the language they used to describe these people.

 

[p(-)0ENiX]

nothing is really new in the article, it says the same things we were saying before and gives a little credit to the Greeks for their efforts to understand; all the inventions mentioned in the article are older than the existence of the Greeks.
Philosophy is the mother of mathematics, and practical mathematics were there in Egypt before the Greeks started philosophizing, meaning that sophisticated philosophy was existent before, otherwise the ancient Egyptians wouldn't have had practical advanced mathematics per se. it is just a question of logic (from philosophy and mathematics again!).

Nothing you just said changes the fact that the Ancient Greeks did make some extremely important contributions to the world.