• In the early 1000s, Ibn al-Haytham wrote about gravitational pull between two masses - 600 years before Newton.
• The first person to insist on an empirical study of science, the scientific method, was the Muslim scholar Ibn al-Haytham in the 11th century.
• The water pumps we all rely on today to bring water to our homes was designed by a Muslim inventor, al-Jazari in 1206 in Diyarbakir, Turkey.
• In the early 11th century, Ibn al-Haytham accurately calculated the depth of the atmosphere by using trigonometry and the refraction of sunlight. It was only when satellites were invented in the 20th century that he was proven right.
• In the early 1000s, the mathematician and engineer, al-Karaji, wrote a book on the extraction of groundwater for irrigation. Not only did he describe the engineering aspects of bringing up groundwater, but he also wrote of the legal aspects of water rights, and referenced the schools of Islamic law (fiqh) in his analysis.
• Your GPS uses trigonometry to calculate position. In the 800s, so did al-Nayrizi to calculate position relative to Makkah for salah.
• In 956, the geographer al-Masudi drew a world map that included a new continent across the ocean from Africa and labelled it the "unknown land". That was 536 years before Columbus.
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