The Golden Age of Islam, an Introduction

When you go out in the middle of the night and look at the seemingly billions of stars, you start to realize your position and scale in a massive and indifferent universe but how many of those stars can you name? I can name around five, Vega, Betelgeuse, Algol, Altair (yes, like Altair from Assassin’s Creed) and Fomalhaut. All of these names are actually Arabic. In fact, around two thirds of the stars that HAVE names, have Arabic names and we have one period of history to thank for that, the Islamic Golden Age.

When Petrarch decided to call the centuries between the fifth and the fifteen centuries the "Dark Age", maybe he didn't have any right to do so, maybe he did but during that time, as the Western civilization went away from scientific studies and into trying to decide how many angels would fit on the head of a pin, the Islamic World illuminated itself with research. They carried the baton from the Greeks and the Romans for the next thousand years till they handed it to the Renaissance-era scholars.

Without them, maybe you wouldn't be watching this video. So, here's to celebrating them!

Additional Facts:

1) Al-Khwarizmi is famous for having said, “The only bra I open is AlgeBRA”.

2) By “Hindu”, I don’t mean only Hindus but also Buddhist and Jain scholars who made scientific progress under the Gupta Dynasty during India’s own Golden Age.

3) On 25th of January, 750 CE, The Abbasid army defeated the Umayyads, sealing their fates. It was also the -1270th anniversary of my 24th Birthday.

4) Since we’re discussing art, I’d like to add something here. Many of these miniatures aren’t from the medieval period. They were created probably recently as tourist souvenirs.

5) Papyrus was a type of writing surface used in the ancient world before Paper. It was made from a plant called Cyperus papyrus.

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Disclaimer: The maps and flags in the video are not 100% accurate. Some maps and flags are difficult to find and so, are estimations.

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If you had a problem with the video, or found something to be incorrect, please send me a message, rather than being a jerk and reporting it.

[samgopnik]

While most history channel on youtube emphasize on the history of Roman and European history, this channel take a different route and cover on the history of Islamic faith that is often not covered by other channel. This is the reason this channel is my fav history channel uptodate. Keep up the great work.

[UsefulCharts]

Awesome video! Such an overlooked period of world history (for Westerners that is). Love that you called Ada Lovelace a goddess.

[loralie_again]

I am very interested in Islamic culture and history, in our college we focused mostly on European history. Your videos are an excellent source of information for me and they are very well presented! Thank you for your efforts and passion! ❤️

[Solon]

I recently finished reading "The travels of Ibn Batuta", will you be covering him at some point?

[nice_spear]

Hey, I am a french students in Sorbonnes University and i wanted to tell you that you work profoundly influenced my vision on the islamic world and history, as much as I love my country I wish more would knew about the greatness of the islamic civilisation : i hope that one day i will be able to share with all my love for this civilisation

[jayasuryangoral-maanyan]

Persia was always an amazing trade area. Trade from China, central Asia, India, the still rich byzantine empire (through ehich trade with russia and scandinavia came) and the rest of Europe through Venice it truly was the centre of the trade world.

[Jmzz]

لا يغير الله ما بقوم حتى يغيروا ما بأنفسهم

[kirandas]

Al Beruni himself was very honest when he admitted about a topic like image of eclipses

"This subject is well known to Indians but unknown to Mμslims".

[QHawk]

Once we get time travel, I'll go back and copy all those house of wisdom books in my thumb drive.

[Eunacis]

"We stand on the shoulders of giants."
- Issac Newton

[sulthonalaufa]

lmao 5:43 u put t-series logo its nice to see a video about education but u put memes into it too


oversimplified : am i a joke to you?

[peodaspeodas]

i found this chanel by chance while scrolling through the epic histories playlist catalogue and I'm truly happy that I found this

[zorak]

The fact you mentioned the christianism contribution to the Islamic Golden Age, besides you being a Muslim, shows how committed to the truth you are and not with a partial narrative. And for that I congrat you! Besides the fact I live in Brazil (South America) where like 92% of the population is Christian, I am not. I just became a huge fan of your channel because I love to know and understand everywhere culture; we do have an extremely euro centric teaching here in the western. Even the great civilizations that lived here in all Americas are not highlighted in our teaching. Have you ever heard about the Aztecs, Mayans and Incas? They had extremely advanced astronomy, mathematics, architecture and agriculture! They conquered all that knowledge completely isolated from the rest of the world, quite impressive, no? This planet has its richness and uniqueness in every corner, that's why we should work for a better world and prosperity and peace for every civilization. We deserve the best!

[KibblesteinTheKIbbs]

a new (to me) history channel with high production value and loads of videos on an era I no little about. binge incoming

[metacerberusVT]

I have to say, this channel is one of the few sources available for historical middle eastern events that is in english and I appreciate it very much. Often I like to learn history from multiple sources but unfortunately there arent many sources for this information that is easily digestible in english. My arabic isnt great so seriously thank you. (from an arab american who can only speak broken arabic)

[TheMightyMike]

The production value is amazing, and I appreciate your presentation style. Keep up the good work.

[fezmsri]

أحسنت لقد أبدعت في الشرح و أيضاً التصميم
إستمر أيها البطل ❤👏🏻🔝

[abdullahsagga]

Great video Al Muqaddimah, keep up the good work! One very important thing I'd like to point out is that Muslim scholars and scientists had the integrity to credit the works they built on to their original sources as it was considered dishonest to not do that. Unfortunately, this was not the case with most Europeans and Westerners works as they seem to only credit the works to themselves without mentioning where they got the ideas or the bases of their ideas. This is why a lot of people do not know about Muslim scholars and the Islamic golden age. Furthermore, when they mention the Islamic golden age, they mostly just mention the translation they did without mentioning their contributions and their invention of totally new fields such as the science of optics ( first studied by ibn al-haytham). This is truly sad :(

[lucasjames]

This is an extraordinarily beautiful video. :-)

[shaheer]

Absolutely beautiful. Obsessed with your work right from the first episode. Can't wait until this channel blows up❤

Glad to know its a fellow Pakistani behind it all🇵🇰(:
-Shaheer