Group 7 Middle East

Science and technology enhance the capabilities of states and societies to obtain and transform resources
necessary for their development and advancement. On the other hand, lack of scientific knowledge and
access to technology not only affects a country’s level of development but also jeopardises its national
security. In an anarchic international system, security interdependence implies that the security of a state is
closely tied to the security of the other states and especially its neighbours. Since national securities are
interdependent, the security or insecurity of a state may have a considerable impact not only on the security
of its immediate neighbours but also on the security of the whole region in which it is geographically
embedded (regional security).
The Middle East's Early Contributions
The Middle East is an area of the world that includes many countries, such as Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq.
Throughout its history, these people have either invented or contributed to the development of important technologies that
have impacted the fields of astronomy, medicine, and much more.
For example, one of the world's most famous polymaths, someone who was really great at many different subject areas, was
Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf ash-Shami al-Asadi. He was born in Damascus, now located in Syria, in 1526. His
knowledge and observations contributed much to the field of astronomy, including how to find the coordinates of stars, how
steam can be used to rotate a rudimentary steam turbine, and important properties related to vision, such as reflection and
refraction.
Let's go over some other technological developments that arose in the Middle East or thanks to people who were born there.
Gas Lasers & CSI
Ali Javan is an Iranian-born physicist who was the co-inventor of the gas laser. Here, an electric current moves through a gas
in order to produce a light. One such type of laser is known as the carbon dioxide laser. This gas laser is used in everything from
industrial cutting and welding to laser surgery.
Iranian-born medical engineer Tofy Mussivand has invented a device that is able to extract and analyze DNA from just a single
skin cell. How could this be important? Well, for one, it could greatly enhance a crime scene investigator's ability to identify a
possible suspect in a murder-case, where all they may have to go on is a single skin cell!
Today, in almost every aspect of our daily lives, we are indebted in many ways to the Arab
contributions to the sciences. The vast contributions, scholarly achievements and innovations of
the Arab/Muslim era to world civilization encompassed much of the previous knowledge of the
ancient civilizations of the Middle East such as Mesopotamia, Syria, the Greeks, and that of India,
China and Persia. Arab and Muslim scholars would come to nourish that which existed, comment
on it and then add and create fields within science that eventually would be transferred to Europe
and to the rest of the world.
The common factor in all of this scientific research activity was the Arabic language, which became
the universal language of science. Then during the 12th and 13th centuries these Arabic studies
began to be translated into Latin. Western scholars such as Adelard of Bath, Daniel of Morley,
Gerard of Cremona, Johannes Campanus, Michael Scott, Philip of Tripoli, Robert of Chester,
Stephenson of Saragossa and William of Lunis were responsible for translating many of the Arab
works. These were, in later centuries, to form the foundation of our modern civilization.
Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan
He introduced experimental investigation into alchemy (from the Arabic al-kimiya’), creating the momentum
for modern chemistry. Ibn Hayyan did much work with metals and salts and is credited with the invention of
the alembic and the discovery of antimony, aqua regia, corrosive sublimate, sodium hydroxide; and
hydrochloric, citric, tartaric, nitric and sulphuric acids.
Between the 8th and 16th centuries Arab/Islamic mechanics and engineering technology flourished in the
Muslim world. In their works, the 9th century Banu Musa (three sons of Musa ibn Shakir) described a
hundred technical constructions, revealed originality and far transcended all which had been previously
written on the subject.
The 13th century Badi’ al-Zaman ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari in one of his books Al Jami’ Bain al-‘Ilm wal ‘Amal al-
Nafi fi Sina at al-Hiyal (A Compendium on the Theory and Practice of Mechanical Arts), an unsurpassed work
on Arab mechanical engineering and the climax of ideas on medieval machines and their construction, gives a
true insight into Arab mechanical technology.
Even more than mechanics and engineering, breakthroughs in mathematics were one of the main Arab
contributions to Western civilization. The Arabs developed the concept of irrational numbers, founded
analytical geometry and established algebra and trigonometry as exact sciences. Their development of
computational mathematics surpassed all the achievements of the past. Without the simplicity and flexibility
of the Arabic numerals and the decimal system, along with the concept of the zero, Western science would
have been almost impossible.
Group 7
Middle East
Members:
Betonio, Melvin
Sajol, Albert
Encomio, Jeiane Clair
Labor, James
Loay, Jose Paulo

Group 7 Middle East

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Science and technology enhance the capabilities of states and societies to obtain and transform resources

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