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The Islamic faith was the Muslims main concern in the first centuries after the honored immigration of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) from Mecca to Medina.
As the Muslim religion spread and the Islamic state offices became stable, the Muslims started to concentrate on various scientific branches of study. The cultural sciences, history and philosophy, were among the first sciences that Muslims studied. Historical writing passed through many stages, first was verbal narration, whose authors were known as the reporters.
Later, a new generation of writers emerged, known as the writers of biography and of the time of the invasions. They were interested in writing about the life of the Islamic Prophet Mohammad.
Historical writing reached its peak from the third century after Hijra (ninth century AD) as regional specialization emerged.
In Egypt, the historian Abd Al Rahman Ibn Abd Al Hakam wrote "Futuh Masr wa Akhbaraha", or "Egypt's Invasions and News", and made the first attempt to write a national history of Egypt based on books of Islamic general history. The school of historical writing reached its greatest flowering in the eighth and ninth centuries after Hijra (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries AD) with the emergence of encyclopedia authors, such as Al Nowairy, who wrote "Nihayat Al Erab fi Funun Al Adab", or "The End of Adroitness in the Arts of Literature".
Among the subjects that Muslim scientists excelled in were medicine and pharmacology, for which Muslim doctors were famous.
The Egyptian doctor, Ali Ibn Radwan, was known for his most famous book, "Dafe' madar al abdan be ard Misr", or "Prevent the Harm of the Bodies in the Land of Egypt". He also had medical with the famous Baghdadian physician Ibn Batlan.
The National Books and Documents House in Cairo has many medical documents that indicate the excellence of Muslims in medicine, as well as the establishment in Egypt of a famous school for writing medical reference books. Muslim scientists wrote about astrology, mathematics, geometry, chemistry, and physics as well as other branches of scientific knowledge. |
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