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I am writing to you, my lord and master—may God prolong your life and grant you permanent well-being and happiness—to inform you that I arrived on Friday, after an eight days’ journey, and unloaded my cargo on Sunday, the day I am…

He began dictation of this book, Kitab al-yaqut (The Book of the Gem) on Thursday, 29 Muharram in the year 326 (December 6, 937) in the principal mosque of Abu Ja’far’s city (Baghdad), from memory, without any books or notes, and he…

From Islam's inception, it has had a varied and profound relationship with Judaism. In scripture and thought, in society and politics, in culture and intellectual life, the two religious civilizations have exemplified their relations. In modern…

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the perception of Islam by Christians and non-Christians alike has been profoundly influenced by a number of terrorist events that have marked the beginning of the new millennium. There were, within a few…

Muslims participate in many types of travel that combine spiritual and mundane goals. For pious Muslims, nearly every journey has a religious dimension. Historically and currently, the most popular forms of religiously inspired travel include the…

One of the greatest astronomers of Islam, al-Battānī (Albatenius, Albategni, or Albategnius of the Latin West, d. ca. 929 C.E.), declares that astronomy is the most noble of the sciences, elevated in dignity, and second only to the science of…

From the perspective of the history of science, alchemy can legitimately be considered an Islamic creation. Notwithstanding some developments in ancient China, it was in the Islamic world that alchemy developed from a dark craft with its mysterious…

Religion has played a central role in the lives of the inhabitants of the Nile Valley from the time of the pharaohs. The priests of ancient Egypt presided over the cults that defined each province, and made up a central part of the ruling class. The…

The capital of Egypt, Cairo was founded in 969 C.E. by the Shīʿī Ismāʿīlī dynasty, the Fāṭimids. Its name in Arabic is al-Qāhirah, “the victorious,” in commemoration of the conquest of Egypt by the Fāṭimids. The Medieval…

"Truth is sought for itself"—but "the truths...are immersed in uncertainties [and] not immune from error...Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his…

In the first place we render thanks to Allah, for the very excellence of the order of His creation, and the abundance of His benefits. His blessings and the abundance of His mercies are upon all the prophets. In the next place, I may say that it is…

As background to the discussion of scientific knowledge in Jim al-Khalili's House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance, the diagram traces the movement of knowlege from East to West over several centuries.…

Unique among the world's great pilgrimages, the hajj is in many ways also the most important. Even compared to the ancient and highly developed international pilgrimage systems of Christianity and Hinduism, the hajj is remarkable in its doctrinal…

These historical maps of the medieval Iberian Peninsula provide background to The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by María Rosa Menocal. The maps show the advance of…

711 North African commander Tariq ibn Ziyad leads Umayyad forces across the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain. Muslim forces defeat the Visigoth army, marking the beginning of Muslim rule in Iberia. 750 - 755 Umayyad prince…

A Many-Shaped Water Fountain: Construction of a fountain from which the water shoots up at one time like the shape of a lily-of-the-valley and at one time like a lance. It is worked by the wind as long as it blows, and we can also make it work and…

Al-Jahiz, “The Disadvantages of Parchment” What is it to you that all my books are written on China paper or Khurasan paper? Explain why you have pressed on me the advantages of using parchment and urged me to write on hide, when you…

I saw the Rusiya when they came hither on their trading voyages and had encamped by the river Itil. I have never seen people with a more developed bodily stature than they. They are as tall as date palms, blond and ruddy, so that they do not need to…

The BBC Arabic film Leo Africanus: A Man between Worlds by Moroccan journalist Badr Sayegh retraces key locations visited by Leo Africanus, the Muslim born as Hasan al-Wazzan in the 1480s. Captured by pirates, he was given as a slave to the Pope and…

Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain is a documentary film and companion website. Inspired by Rosa Maria Menocal’s Ornament of the World, the documentary explores the European society in which Muslims, Jews and Christians lived…

A walker’s-eye view of a 1,000-year-old palace is provided in the Alhambra Virtual Walking Tour. The Alhambra is a hilltop stronghold in Granada, a city in the Spanish province of Andalusia. Called Al-Andalus in Arabic, Andalusia was ruled by…

We travelled to the town of Qāliqūṭ [Calicut], which is one of the chief ports in Mulaibār. It is visited by men from China, Jāwa, Ceylon, the Maldives, al-Yaman [Yemen] and Fārs [Persia], and in it gather merchants from all quarters. Its…

FAN-YEN-NA [BAMIYAN]. This kingdom is about 2000 li from east to west, and 300 li from north to south. It is situated in the midst of the Snowy Mountains. The people inhabit towns either in the mountains or the valleys, according to circumstances.…

As a first step on our journey through “Connected Histories” let us start with a painting. More precisely, it is an illustration, found within the pages of a famous sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript known as The History of the West…

Centuries before the dawn of the modern age—even before the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan—the world was already a surprisingly interconnected place. Braving the high seas and the desert sands, merchants peddled…

Stewart Gordon uses the narratives of nine travelers to tell the story of Asia’s diverse economy and cultures between 500 and 1500 CE. During those thousand years, the world’s largest continent was the hub of global cultural and economic…

The Islamic empire of al-Andalus was known in its time as “the ornament of the world.” In particular, its capital city, Córdoba, was widely noted for its cosmopolitan culture, diverse population, and artistic achievements. In this…

This 1986 novel, originally published in French as Léon, l’Africain, is the imagined autobiography of real-life geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wassan (ca. 1494–ca. 1554), whose far-reaching travels in the sixteenth…

Moving between past and present, anthropologist Amitav Ghosh presents a lyrical portrait of life in Egypt, as well as broad histories of that country, Tunisia, and India’s Malabar Coast. Ghosh weaves strands of his own life in rural Egypt into…

The House of Wisdom in Baghdad stands as a symbol of the great synthesis of Greek science and philosophy, Indian mathematics, and Persian literature brought about by their translation into Arabic in the eighth century CE. Jim Al-Khalili details…