Al-Ghazali, full name Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭūsiyy al-Ġazzālīy, and known in Persian-speaking countries as Imam Muhammad-i Ghazali or in Medieval Europe by the Latinized as Algazelus or Algazel, was a Sunni Muslim polymath. He is known as one of the most prominent and influential jurisconsult, legal theoretician, mufti, philosopher, theologian, logician and mystic in Islamic history.
Islamic philosophy is philosophy that emerges from the Islamic tradition. Two terms traditionally used in the Islamic world are sometimes translated as philosophy—falsafa, which refers to philosophy as well as logic, mathematics, and physics; and Kalam, which refers to a rationalist form of Scholastic Islamic theology which includes the schools of Maturidiyah, Ashaira and Mu'tazila.
Madrasa, sometimes transliterated as madrasah or madrassa, is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious, whether for elementary education or higher learning. In countries outside the Arab world, the word usually refers to a specific type of religious school or college for the study of the religion of Islam, though this may not be the only subject studied.
The House of Wisdom, also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad, was a major Abbasid public academy and intellectual center in Baghdad and one of the world's largest public libraries during the Islamic Golden Age. The House of Wisdom was founded either as a library for the collections of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late 8th century or was a private collection created by al-Mansur to house rare books and collections of poetry in Arabic. During the reign of the Caliph al-Ma'mun, it was turned into a public academy and a library.
Abū al-Fiḍā’ ‘Imād ad-Dīn Ismā‘īl ibn ‘Umar ibn Kathīr al-Qurashī al-Damishqī, known as Ibn Kathīr, was a highly influential Arab historian, exegete and scholar during the Mamluk era in Syria. An expert on tafsir and fiqh (jurisprudence), he wrote several books, including a fourteen-volume universal history titled Al-Bidaya wa'l-Nihaya.
Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf ash-Shami al-Asadi was an Ottoman polymath active in Cairo and Istanbul. He was the author of more than ninety books on a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, clocks, engineering, mathematics, mechanics, optics and natural philosophy.
Medieval Islamic astronomy comprises the astronomical developments made in the Islamic world, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age, and mostly written in the Arabic language. These developments mostly took place in the Middle East, Central Asia, Al-Andalus, and North Africa, and later in the Far East and India. It closely parallels the genesis of other Islamic sciences in its assimilation of foreign material and the amalgamation of the disparate elements of that material to create a science with Islamic characteristics. These included Greek, Sassanid, and Indian works in particular, which were translated and built upon.
Islamic cosmology is the cosmology of Islamic societies. It is mainly derived from the Qur'an, Hadith, Sunnah, and current Islamic as well as other pre-Islamic sources. The Qur'an itself mentions seven heavens.
Muslim scholars have developed a spectrum of viewpoints on science within the context of Islam. The Quran and Islam allows much interpretation when it comes to science. Scientists of medieval Muslim civilization contributed to the new discoveries in science. From the eighth to fifteenth century, Muslim mathematicians and astronomers furthered the development of almost all areas of mathematics. At the same time, concerns have been raised about the lack of scientific literacy in parts of the modern Muslim world.
Jane Dammen McAuliffe is an American educator, scholar of Islam and the inaugural director of national and international outreach at the Library of Congress. She is a president emeritus of Bryn Mawr College and former dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown University. As a specialist in the Qur'an and its interpretation, McAuliffe has edited the six-volume Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān and continues to lead the editorial team for the online edition of the work.
Islamic modernism is a movement that has been described as "the first Muslim ideological response to the Western cultural challenge," attempting to reconcile the Islamic faith with modern values such as democracy, civil rights, rationality, equality, and progress. It featured a "critical reexamination of the classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence", and a new approach to Islamic theology and Quranic exegesis (Tafsir). A contemporary definition describes it as an "effort to re-read Islam's fundamental sources—the Qur'an and the Sunna, —by placing them in their historical context, and then reinterpreting them, non-literally, in the light of the modern context."
There was cultural contact between Europe and the Islamic world from the Renaissance to Early Modern period.
Christian influences in Islam can be traced back to Eastern Christianity, which surrounded the origins of Islam. Islam, emerging in the context of the Middle East that was largely Christian, was first seen as a Christological heresy known as the "heresy of the Ishmaelites", described as such in Concerning Heresy by Saint John of Damascus, a Syriac scholar.
Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tusi, also known as Nasir al-Din al-Tusi or simply as (al-)Tusi, was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was a well published author, writing on subjects of math, engineering, prose, and mysticism. Additionally, al-Tusi made several scientific advancements. In astronomy, al-Tusi created very accurate tables of planetary motion, an updated planetary model, and critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. He also made strides in logic, mathematics but especially trigonometry, biology, and chemistry. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi left behind a great legacy as well. Tusi is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of medieval Islam, since he is often considered the creator of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars. There is also reason to believe that he may have influenced Copernican heliocentrism. Nasir proposed that humans are related to animals and that some animals have a limited level of awareness while humans have a superior level of awareness amongst animals.
Nizam al-Din Hasan al-Nisaburi, whose full name was Nizam al-Din Hasan ibn Mohammad ibn Hossein Qumi Nishapuri was a Persian Sunni Islamic Shafi'i, Ash'ari scholar, mathematician, astronomer, jurist, Qur'an exegete, and poet.
Sevim Tekeli was a prominent Turkish history of science professor.
The Gazi-Husrev-beg Library is a public library in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina founded in 1537 by the Ottomans, and is part of a larger complex with Gazi Husrev-beg Medresa. It holds one of the most important collections of Islamic manuscripts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, including many originally donated by Gazi Husrev-beg. The collection survived through Bosnian war and Siege of Sarajevo. The library also holds a sizable number of books, journals, newspapers, documents and photographs.
Aql bi'l fil is a kind of intellect in Islamic philosophy. This level deals with readiness of soul for acquiring the forms without receiving them again.
Sadr al-Shari'a al-Asghar, also known as Sadr al-Shari'a al-Thani, was a Hanafi-Maturidi scholar, faqih (jurist), mutakallim (theologian), mufassir, muhaddith, nahawi (grammarian), lughawi (linguist), logician, and astronomer, known for both his theories of time and place and his commentary on Islamic jurisprudence, indicating the depth of his knowledge in various Islamic disciplines.
Ghara'ib al-Qur'an wa Ragha'ib al-Furqan or, named in brief, Ghara'ib al-Qur'an, better known as Tafsir al-Nisaburi, is a classical Sunni–Sufitafsir (exegesis) of the Qur'an, authored by the Shafi'i-Ash'ari scholar Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi, who closely follows al-Fakhr al-Razi's tafsir in many places.
