ABSTRACT
“Islamic science” is currently the preferred term for the scientific activities carried on mainly, but not exclusively, by Muslims of various ethnic backgrounds throughout the greater Middle East from the inception of Islam up until the early modern era. The geographic area of these activities extended from Morocco to Afghanistan. Important Muslim scientific scholars lived in the famous cities of the Middle East, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Fez, but also in Samarkand and Bukhara (Uzbekistan), Rayy (Iran), and Gazna (Afghanistan). The principal language used by these researchers was Arabic, and for that reason historians have also referred to the scientific work of these scholars as “Arabic science.” Yet this designation is inadequate and misleading. For while the main language of inquiry was Arabic, many of the active scholars were not ethnic Arabs. On the other hand, the term “Islamic science” evokes the theocratic nature of Islamic civilization, thus giving a religious component to scientific knowledge that was absent from the great philosophical minds of the golden era of Islamic intellectual development.
