Islamic Golden Age Timeline

It is said by many historians that the opening of the first private pharmacy in the eighth century marks the independence of pharmacy from medicine. Pharmacists and apothecaries had appeared in the first hospitals as early as the seventh century.

By the ninth century, pharmacy was established as an independent and well-defined profession by Muslim scholars. The rise of alchemy during the same century also played a vital role in early pharmacological development.

The tenth-century Arab physician Al-Zahrawi is sometimes referred to as the 'Father of surgery'. His work advanced surgical practice and instruments in the medieval Islamic world and influenced European medicine for centuries.

Image source: Al-Zahrawi

Medical facilities traditionally closed each night, but by the tenth century laws were passed to keep hospitals open 24 hours a day. Baghdad also had a separate hospital for convicts after vizier 'Ali ibn Isa ibn Jarah insisted prisons have daily medical examinations.

Image source: Bimaristan

By the tenth century Baghdad had five more hospitals beyond its first; Damascus had six hospitals by the 15th century, while Córdoba alone had 50 major hospitals, many exclusively for military use.

Avicenna's Canon of Medicine became one of history's most influential medical texts. During the 15th and 16th centuries alone it was published more than thirty-five times, and it served as a standard medical textbook in Europe through the 18th century.

Image source: The Canon of Medicine

It was through 12th-century Arabic translations that medieval Europe rediscovered Hellenic medicine, including the works of Galen and Hippocrates, and discovered ancient Indian medicine, including the works of Sushruta and Charaka.

In the thirteenth century, Ibn al-Quff was a physician and surgeon who published numerous books, commentaries, and treatises on surgery, extending the surgical tradition of Al-Zahrawi.

In a notable endowment, the 13th-century governor of Egypt Al-Mansur Qalawun ordained a foundation containing a mosque and chapel, separate wards for different diseases, a library for doctors and a pharmacy; the hospital is still used today for ophthalmology.

Ziryab (789–857) was a renowned polymath whose contributions included formal dining, haircuts, and chess, in addition to his dominance of the musical scene of the ninth century, helping shape the cultural life of Umayyad Córdoba.

Image source: Ziryab

The Homeric epics were translated from Greek to Arabic in the 8th century CE, later inspiring Arabic folk literature such as the tale of Sinbad the Sailor, which drew directly on Hellenistic literature including the Alexander Romances popular across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Al-Kindi (c. 801 – c. 873), a product of the mixing cultures of Central Asia and Arabia, wrote about music including works on the lute, contributing to the flowering of Arabic music theory during the ninth century.

Image source: Al-Kindi

Philosopher and esthete Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950) established at the end of the ninth century the foundations of modern Arabic music theory based on the maqammat, or musical modes. His described scale remained in use by some musicians through the 13th century.

Image source: Al-Farabi

The 13th-century poet Rumi, also known as Mawlana ('the great of our crowd'), wrote some of the finest poetry in the Persian language and remains one of the best-selling poets in the United States today.

Image source: Rumi

Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (1216–1294), among thinkers of mixed Central Asian and Arabian heritage who wrote about music and the lute, continued the theoretical tradition begun by al-Farabi into the later golden age.

Image source: Safi al-Din al-Urmawi

Some scholars extend the end of the golden age to around 1350, thereby including the Timurid Renaissance, a flourishing of arts and sciences in the Persianate world under Timurid patronage.

Image source: Timurid Renaissance

Manuscript illumination was an important art form, and Persian miniature painting flourished in the Persianate world before going on to influence miniature art in the Ottoman and Mughal courts between the 16th and 17th centuries.

Conway Zirkle noted that al-Jahiz was one of those who discussed a 'struggle for existence' in his Kitāb al-Hayawān (Book of Animals), written in the 9th century, an idea later cited in surveys of the history leading to the theory of natural selection.

Image source: Al-Jahiz

In their ninth-century Book of Ingenious Devices, the Banū Mūsā brothers described an automatic flute player which may have been the first programmable machine, a landmark in the early history of automation and mechanical engineering in the Islamic world.

Image source: Book of Ingenious Devices

Abū Bakr al-Rāzī's experiments with vitriol would eventually lead thirteenth-century Latin alchemists such as pseudo-Geber to discover mineral acids like sulfuric acid and nitric acid, building on Jābirian chemistry including the synthesis of ammonium chloride.

Image source: Abu Bakr al-Razi

Al-Biruni (973–1050) estimated the radius of the Earth with remarkable accuracy, close to the modern value, demonstrating the sophistication of geodesy and mathematics in the Islamic Golden Age.

Image source: Al-Biruni

One of the first to criticize the Ptolemaic model was Ibn al-Haytham, a leader of physics in the 11th century in Cairo, whose critical approach to inherited astronomical models exemplified the scientific spirit of the age.

Image source: Ibn al-Haytham

Arab mathematician Ibn Muʿādh al-Jayyānī is one of several scholars credited with the invention of the spherical law of sines; he wrote 'The Book of Unknown Arcs of a Sphere' in the 11th century, advancing trigonometry.

Image source: Ibn Mu'adh al-Jayyani

Khayyám's Treatise on Demonstrations of Problems of Algebra (1070) was a significant step in the development of algebra, part of Persian mathematics eventually transmitted to Europe.

Image source: Omar Khayyam

The 12th-century scholar-inventor Ismail al-Jazari described numerous mechanical devices, ideas on automation and construction methods, most notable among them the Elephant clock, cementing his reputation as a pioneer of engineering.

Image source: Ismail al-Jazari

In the 13th century Nasir al-Din al-Tusi constructed the Maragha Observatory in what is today Iran, advancing astronomy; he also argued that humans were derived from advanced animals, anticipating evolutionary thought.

Image source: Maragheh observatory

Working in Damascus in 1350 AD, Ibn al-Shatir employed the Tusi-couple to successfully eliminate the equant and other objectionable circles Ptolemy had used, producing one of the era's most important astronomical models.

Image source: Ibn al-Shatir

Late in the 16th century, the Ottoman-era scholar Taqi ad-Din Muhammad wrote on a mechanism that worked with the application of steam energy, showing the continuation of inventive engineering long after the classical golden age.

Image source: Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf

Economic historian Joel Mokyr argued that al-Ghazali (1058–1111), author of The Incoherence of the Philosophers, was a key figure in the decline of Islamic science, prompting a cultural shift away from scientific thinking—though others argue he opposed only science encroaching on religion.

Image source: Al-Ghazali

In 1206, Genghis Khan established the Mongol Empire which, during the 13th century, conquered most of the Eurasian land mass, including China in the east and much of the old Islamic caliphate in the west, setting the stage for the era's end.

Image source: Genghis Khan

The destruction of Baghdad and the House of Wisdom by Hulagu Khan in 1258 has been seen by some as the end of the Islamic Golden Age, marking the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate after Mongol invasions.

Image source: Siege of Baghdad (1258)