Journal for the History of Arabic Science

In general the book is a study of the development of the chemical profession , c. 1800 to 1976, and in it there is a skilful blending of the technical content of chemistry and the social factors operating on it from without, together with dissension and rivalry from within. Education, chemical techniques, and the effects of two world wars, industrial depression and the E.E.C. are also dealt with. This book will be of special attraction to practising chemists, but also to pharmacists and medical personnel who are increasingly in contact with chemical concepts and techniques. In addition it will provide historians of science and medicine with a valuable survey of nineteenth-century British chemistry. The need for this unique journal has long been felt: it is unique in that it is entirely devoted to the history of Arabic science and prints papers in Arabic as well as English and French. Historians of Arabic science will no longer have to publish the Arabic text and commentary of one paper in an oriental periodical, and to print elsewhere a version in an occidental language. Alternatively, if the Arabic texts with a translation and commentary are published together in a periodical of a general nature, however prestigious, they may not become known to most historians of science. The Managing Editors, all of whom contributed scholarly papers to this volume, are Professor A. Y. al-Hassan and Professor E. S. Kennedy, who jointly deal with papers on mathematics, technology, and astronomy, and Professor S. K. Hamarneh, being in charge of contributions in the fields of medicine, pharmacy, and allied sciences. The Editors and an international Board of Editors are among the leading historians of Arabic science. In his lucid editorial, Hamarneh outlines the purpose of this journal and explains successfully the connotation of the expression "Arabic-Islamic" science. This term is frequently used to embrace the great efforts of men of different religious creeds who flourished under Muslim rulers and wrote in Arabic, the language of the Koran, the holy book of Islam. They preserved part of the Greek heritage from extinction and made their own contributions. The Arabic tongue, Hamarneh writes, "has a remarkable proficiency, clarity, elegance and facility to embrace and articulate all the developing scientific and technical knowledge." Present-day Iranians prefer to use the expression Tibb sunnat-t Iran "traditional medicine of Iran", rather than "Arabic-Islamic medicine". Their ancestors, to name only Ijunayn, al-Razi, and …