Teach Astronomy - Arab Astronomy

http://www.teachastronomy.com/ During much of the dark ages and the medieval era the flame of science was carried by Arab astronomers and mathematicians. They refined the measurement of the Earth's circumference. Arab opticians realized the way that the eye worked and developed advanced theories of optics. The Arabs made no cosmological models because the Qur'an forbids pictorial representation of the heavens. However many star names date from Arab times, and many of the terms for mathematical and chemical symbols and terminology are Arab words. By 1000 AD the great senders of learning in Europe had spread under the influence of the Islamic empire to Spain.