Category: Timeline Stories

Al-Ghazālī in Arabic calligraphy   The influential thinker al-Ghazālī dissects the arguments of Ibn Sina, al-Farabi and other thinkers who try to synthesize Aristotle with Islamic theoloy. He identifies three…

Miniature of unknown origin   Ibn Sina, Latinized as Avicenna, is the most influential thinker of the Islamic Golden Age. The philosopher and physician from Bukhara refines al-Fārābī’s synthesis of…

al-Fārābī’s portrait on a Kazakh banknote (Public Domain)   Abu Nasr al-Fārābī is known as ‘the second teacher’, after Aristotle. The philosopher from Thurkestan is one of the first thinkers…

al-Rāzī examining a sick boy (Color print after Hossein Behzad)   The nearly 200 books of Persian multi talent Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī – also known as ‘Rhazes’…

al-Maʾmūn (depicted left), the Madrid Skylitzes   The ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Maʾmūn institutes a religious persecution known as the Mihna in 833. Scholars are imprisoned, flogged and even executed if they refuse…

Aristotle depicted in the Kitāb naʿt al-hayawān manuscript (9th century)   The Graeco-Arabic translation movement is launched by Caliph Al-Mansur in 754. In the following centuries, ancient thinkers like Aristotle, Plato,…

Scholars in an ‘Abbāsid library in Baghdad. Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti (c. 1237): The Maqamat of al-Hariri by (Public Domain)   The ‘Abbāsid Dynasty rules the Caliphate from their capital in Baghdad for five centuries.…

Floor painting in Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi built by Ummayad Caliph HishāmʿAbd al-Malik (Public Domain)   The Umayyads rules the Caliphate from their capital in Damascus between 661 and 750. The dynasty…

Muhammad al-Idrisi’s map of the world (1154) (Public Domain)   Muhammad (c. 570-632) is the founder of Islam and proclaimer of the Qur’ān. According to Islamic tradition, he receives his…