by Paul Lewis
It is the thread that links cars, carpets and cameras and is also
responsible for three-course meals, bookshops and modern medicine. The
Islamic civilisation, according to the curators of a national exhibition
that opened this week, has made an enormous but largely neglected
contribution to the way we live in the west.
The project, 1001 Inventions:
Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World, supported by the Home Office
and the Department for Trade and Industry, uncovers the Islamic
civilisation's overlooked contribution to science, technology and art during
the dark ages in European history.
It lifts the veil on hundreds of innovations - from kiosks and chess through
to windmills and cryptography - that are often popularly associated with the
western world but originate from Muslim scholarship and science.
Based on more than 3,000 peer-reviewed academic studies, the exhibition
charts Islamic innovations during ten decades of "missing history" spanning
from the 6th to the 16th century and covering an area stretching from China
to southern Spain. . . .
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1001 Inventions Book, Teachers' Pack, Educational
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PICTURE GALLERY: "Taj Mahal, Agra, India," wikipedia.org, xxx
PICTURE GALLERY: "Agra Fort, Agra, India," wikipedia.org, xxx
PICTURE GALLERY: "Qutb Complex, New Delhi, India," wikipedia.org, xxx
