† This paper originated from research supported by ARO grant W911NF0610359 and DARPA grant NBCH1050008. AbstractIbn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhazen or Alhacen) was born in Basra in 965 A.D. [354 A.H.], but produced nearly all of his work in Cairo's al-Azhar Mosque, where he wrote nearly one hundred works on topics as diverse as poetry and politics. Al-Haytham is primarily known for his writing...

fakhr al-dīn al-rāzī, theologian and philosopher of the 12th centuriy (1148-1209), has a huge literary production in many scholary disciplines of his time. nothwithstanding some original ideas which are mostly found in his theological and philosophical writings, most of his other works are compilations based on other sources. some of these sources still exist, while most of the others seem to h...

After the fall of the Roman Empire in AD 476, scientific progress in Europe had come to a standstill. This era between fall of Rome and the Renaissance is commonly known as the dark ages. However, from the 8th till 13th century, scientific and cultural knowledge had flourished in the Islamic world. This period, which began soon after the establishment of the Abbasid Khalifate in Baghdad in the ...