Abu Huraira related that Allah’s Apostle said referring to the Quran, “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with ru’b (awe and fear, cast into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand.” Abu Huraira added: Allah’s Apostle has left the world and now you, people, are bringing out those treasures. (Bukhari)
If intellectual strength was solely what gave mankind the ability to judge truth from falsehood, then uneducated people would be incapable of judging the truth and knowing right from wrong, yet the Qur’an is for all mankind not just the intelligent. The truth and essence of any matter is felt in a persons heart and it is what guides all mankind towards their actions. This is why Rasul Allah (saws) said “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings”, the simple minded can understand the expressions and the essence of what they mean through the descriptive imagery they employ, and the knowledgable people can derive knowledge from them as they understand their depths, in this way all society benefited from the Quran’s guidance.
Over the last 1400 years of Islam, Muslim Scholars took from the Qur’an, which was revealed in stages over 23 years, between 609 AD and 632 AD, knowledge that helped shape the Islamic and Modern world.
Until the mid 19th century When the last Islamic Khalifah, the Ottomans, began to decline and Europe began referring to it as a sick man, in anticipation of one day finally surpassing it technologically having spent centuries in it’s shadow, Islam had advanced the entire world in all areas of knowledge lifting it from the dark ages much of it was in.
By only the 9th century muslim scientist’s had discovered the world was round and in comparison to Europe, the masses embraced the notion and took it for granted, Ibn Hazm said its proof was “that the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth”, meaning if you where to follow the sun to where you perceived it to be setting, you would always find it vertical (up in the sky) to that location even though from your original location it may appear to be setting, that notion dawned on Galileo 500 years later.
“The debate in those days, was about, exactly how large was the earth. In the early 800s, the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mun assembled the brightest minds of the day (including al-Khawarizmi) in Baghdad who calculated the earth’s circumference and were off by only 4% of it’s actual size.”
Muslim scientist measured its circumference at 40,253.4 Km, less than 200 Km from the exact figure in accuracy, many scientific advances in the Islamic world occurred because of this, and hence over the years one scientific discovery built upon another scientific discovery, for almost 1300 years.
Many verses in the Quran point to the nature of things in the Universe, “He it is who has made the sun a
Other translations read “He it is Who made the sun a shining brightness and the moon a light” the significance of the moon and sun is in their specific description, the sun is mentioned as a source of light, an object that gives out light while the moon is mentioned as simply a light without using the description that it shines or radiates even though light does that naturally. If one looks at the moon at night and thinks about these words it becomes clear that the moon is serving its function as a light at night which is different than the suns function, to create the Day itself by it’s radiating Light. Allah made a deliberate distinction and emphasis on the suns role in being the producer of light but did not do so for the moon, to teach man there is a difference between the two.
“Indeed, in the alternation of night and day, and in all that Allah has created in the heavens and the earth there are Signs for a God-fearing people.” (Al Qur’an 10:5-6)
Allah says a God Fearing people would see His signs in creation and advance scientifically as they come to know them. Allah mentions this for a God fearing people because of the qualities they embody and the acts they perform. Our world by comparison Arabia 1400 years ago is entirely focused on scientific endeavours, but in the old Islamic world from 609 AD onwards it was precisely the God fearing people who studied creation and science because they were not preoccupied with wealth and the material world, most scientists up to the modern age where in fact religious and devout people who had mastery over multiple disciplines.
So it was religious people who laying the scientific foundations of the modern world, the world would not have reached up to this point without them as no one else was capable of doing this work because of their lifestyles and the conditions they lived under in a pre-modern world.
The basic act of worship in Islam begins with and requires wudu, washing, this act cleanses the body and mind and allows man to focus on finer details in life, better so than a person who does not wash on a regular basis, keeping in mind the state of the world at the time, and in Islam wudu (washing the body) is performed at least five times a day.
We only need to imagine what we would feel like if we didn’t wash more than one day a week, could we work with the same productivity and have the same clarity in our self.
By comparison to the Islamic world washing on a regular basis was not common in Europe or Arabia before the lifetime of the Prophet (d.632), Allah bless him and grant him peace. When the muslims began to pray regularly it changed the Arab world entirely from that point, in fact soap was a muslim invention, and the benefits of washing regularly did not spread to Europe until after the crusades in 1095 AD when they began to take back with them all the advances of the Islamic world.
If people only washed once a week and society as a whole was in that state, people who are born into a world in which they did not know what it felt like to be clean, then the psychological impact of introducing regular washing on that society would be significant and dramatic.
It was only after this point in time that Europe began to pull itself out of the Dark Ages it was in for the past few hundred years and began to catch up scientifically, once washing spread through out society and the world, it was a key factor in uplifting the European mentality, the change began and so they started struggling to change their old belief’s, but it would take them another few hundred years to rid themselves of the archaic institutions that dominated the landscape and their old ways of thinking.
Since washing now became a fundamental aspect of life that allowed them to focus on the finer realities of the world around them and make advances in knowledge, the European renaissance began in the 12th century and was vastly different than any that had come before it.
Even though cleanliness helped change Europe the extent of it’s importance was still not realized among the mass’s because by the 14th century when the Black Death wiped out an estimated 200 million people, a lack of Cleanliness in society not just personnel life was responsible for the spread of the disease, the cleaner and generally more rat-free environment of Islamic communities, in which medicine and health were far more advanced than in the West at that time, forestalled the spread of Plague eastward and it took relatively few victims there.
Because of the Islamic societies focus on purity, this allowed them to see it’s significance in other ares of life and develop on it. By comparison to Europe and the rest of the world, the first hospital in the world was founded by Khaliph Al-Walid I, an Ummayad Khaliph (705-715 AD), in Jundishapur, a Persian city. But the first true Islamic hospital which set the standard for later hospitals around the world was built during the reign of Khaliph Harun-ul-Rashid (786-809 AD) in Baghdad. A well-known physician, Jibrail Bakhtishu, was invited to head the new bimartistan, it achieved great fame and so other hospitals were built in Baghdad.
The great Islamic physician Al-Razi selected the site for the Audidi hospital by having pieces of meat hung in various quarters of the city and watched how much and how quickly they putrefied. He then advised the Caliph to locate the hospital where the putrefaction was the slowest and the least! This showed the inception of the concept of germs carried through the air. When the hospital opened, it had 24 physicians on staff including specialists categorized as physiologists, oculists, surgeons and bonesetters.
There was a guiding text called the Waqf document which set the standard of care for all Hospitals well into our own time, and is part of the oath taken by modern physicians, which stated: “The hospital shall keep all patients, men and women, until they are completely recovered. All costs are to be borne by the hospital whether the people come from afar or near, whether they are residents or foreigners, strong or weak, rich or poor, employed or unemployed, blind or sighted, physically or mentally ill, learned or illiterate. There are no conditions of consideration and payment; none is objected to or even indirectly hinted at for non-payment. The entire service is through the magnificence of Allah, the generous one.”
“One of the largest hospitals ever built was the Mansuri Hospital in Cairo, completed in 1248 AD under the rule of the Mameluke ruler of Egypt, Mansur Qalaun. The hospital garnered many endowments for its functioning. Men and women were admitted to different wards, and no attention was paid to religion, race or creed. Following the tenets of the Waqf document, no one was turned away and there was no limit to how long patients could stay.”
“There were different wards for different conditions, such as those requiring surgical procedures, fevers and eye diseases. The Mansuri Hospital had its own pharmacy, library and lecture halls. There was also a mosque for Muslim patients, as well as a chapel for Christian patients.”
“The physical conditions of many of these hospitals were actually lavish, especially those established by princes, rulers and viziers. Some were even converted from palaces.”
“The invention of the hospital was one of the greatest achievements of Islamic medicine. Probably the most impressive aspect of this invention was its mission, the treatment of all people who came to it, regardless of their status.”
If we contrast this to the Black death that almost wiped out Europe then the significance of Purity can be clearly understood, not just for these obvious reasons but to uplift man so he can reach the higher aspects of life and work to make them a reality, Islamic prayer began with purity and as a result it became the foundation of It’s Empire.