“This is a book which we have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], that you might bring mankind out of darkness into the light by the permission of their Lord – to the path of the Exalted in Might, the Praiseworthy” [Surah Ibraheem (14): Ayah 1]Whilst the Western world has managed to achieve phenomenal development since the industrial revolution the Muslim world on the other hand lags far behind. The Muslim world is represented by an underdeveloped infrastructure, poverty, unemployment and nothing in the way of technological development. At the same time the Muslim world possesses some of the worlds largest reserves of key mineral resources.
The Muslim world single handedly possesses 74% of the world’s oil reserves – the world’s most important commodity.
The economies of the Muslim world are characterised by imports rather than exports, in some of the most basic commodities, Pakistan imports food staples although it produces over $30 billion in agricultural products annually. The Middle East, though rich in oil, imports large amounts of refined products every year due to its lack of oil refineries.
Many Muslim nations are characterised with economies geared around single commodities therefore lacking the diversification that would lead to a wide skills base. The oil rich Middle East and the mineral rich African nations are characterised with such economies.
The Muslim world has attempted export led growth strategies with disastrous consequences. The concentration on exports through single commodities has led to most of the population remaining unemployed and in poverty.
Contrast this with Islamic economic history which is steeped in industrial development. The dominance of the desert and scant water resources in the Middle East led to many agricultural developments. The early industrial use of tidal power, wind power and petroleum led to the earliest large factory complexes (tiraz). Water came to be an important commodity due to the climatic conditions and this created the motive to make the best use of the few rivers and streams that straddled the Middle East.
Muslim engineers perfected the use of watermills and invented horizontal-wheeled and vertical-wheeled water mills. This led to the emergence of a variety of industrial mills including gristmills, hullers, paper mills, sawmills, shipmills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, tide mills, and windmills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation, from al-Andalus and North Africa to the Middle East and Central Asia.
Muslim engineer’s perfected water turbines and made an earth shattering break through in the 12th century. Al-Jazari through his works managed to invent the crankshaft, and created rotary motion through the use of rods and cylinders. He was the first to incorporate it into a machine. The British Empire used this understanding and utilized steam and then coal to drive pistons and then eventually to generate rotary (motion) to move machines. This eventually led to the development of automobiles due primarily to the development of the combustion engine; this is where the burning of fuel in an engine acts on the pistons causing the movement of the solid parts, eventually moving the automobile.
As many lands came under the fold of the Islamic civilisation, urbanisation led to a number of developments. The Arabian desert had scant water springs making most of the region uninhabitable; this was overcome by Muslim engineers developing canals from the Euphrates and Tigris. The swamps around Baghdad were drained, freeing the city of Malaria. Muslim engineers perfected the waterwheel and constructed elaborate underground water channels called qanats. This led to the development of advanced domestic water systems with sewers, public baths, drinking fountains, piped drinking water supplies and widespread private and public toilets and bathing facilities.
Such advances made it possible for many industrial tasks that were previously driven by manual labour in the ancient Islamic world to be mechanized and be driven by machines instead. This shows Islam is not at odds with science as presented by some. Historically Islam was the catalyst that drove Muslim interest in science.
[Article extracted from the ‘Islam and Industrial Development’ by Adnan Khan]
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