Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Michael Gilsenan, Recognising Islam: 

Religion and Society in the Modern Middle East (London: 

Croom Helm, 1982).

Sayyid Qutb

  See q

Ubt

, s

ayyid

.

school

  See a

zhar

, 

al

-; 

education

; 

kuttab

; 

madrasa

; 

student

; 

university

.

science

During ancient and medieval times, sciences (or 

hard sciences) were indistinguishable from 

phi

-

losophy

. Therefore, sciences hereafter are taken to 

mean intellectual endeavors outside the fields of 

theology

 and literature. Sciences flourished in the 

Arabo-Islamic empire since the ninth century. The 

most significant thrust came from a movement of 

translation of other scientific and philosophical 

traditions into Arabic. c

aliph

s and high officials 

were usually the sponsors of this movement, and 

of scholarship in general. Prominent among them 

is the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun (ninth century), 

who commissioned the building of the famous 

library and translation house of Bayt al-Hikmah 

in b

aghdad

. Other famous centers of learning and 

scholarship in the empire were Gundishapur and 

Harran, d

amascUs

, c

airo

, and c

ordoba

.

Although all scientific works were translated 

into or written in Arabic, all ethnic (Greeks, Anato-

lians, Syriacs, Persians, Arabs) and religious (Chris-

tians, Jews, Sabians, Muslims) communities of the 

empire produced scholars who contributed to 

sciences. Taking the term Arabo-Islamic to denote 

belonging to a political entity rather than to a reli-

gious, ethnic, or linguistic entity, these scholars will 

be referred to hereafter as the Arabo-Islamic schol-

ars. Scientific and philosophical works were trans-

lated from the Greek, Syriac, Sanskrit and Persian 

languages by such scholars as Ishaq ibn Hunayn 

(d. ca. 911), Thabit ibn Qurra (d. 901), the Banu 

Musa brothers (ninth century), al-Khawarizmi (d. 

ca. 850), and 

al

-b

irUni

 (d. 1048).

The contribution of the Arabo-Islamic schol-

ars to the genesis of modern sciences constitutes 

a passionately debated topic of research (see Huff 

and Sabra), and in many encyclopedias of science 

and its history, the Arabo-Islamic scholars are 

credited only with preserving Greek learning for 

European medieval scholars. However, the debate 

is slightly misguided because the work of any 

scholar should be studied with reference to his/

her own culture, and not only to how it impacted 

modern culture and sciences.

Because of its importance to religious duties 

(for example, calculating the 

qibla

  and prayer