Member-only story
10 Inventions from Arab Inventors We Were Never Taught About
Forget Newton. You want to know who made revolutionary discoveries and advanced numerous concepts that we know today?
We all know of how Columbus explored the Americas (killing thousands of natives in the process, but that’s another story), of how Newton discovered gravity as an apple fell off a tree, of how Galileo improved the telescope (yes, improved not invented) and discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter.
But how many of us have heard of the legendary inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas who invented the first flying machine? Or of Fatima al-Fihri, who founded the world’s first university? Or of the greatest medical doctor of the Middle Ages, Al-Razi, whose 23-volume encyclopedias of medicine played a monumental role in the medical practices of later Europe?
Here is a list of 10 inventions (out of countless others) that we simply ought to know.
1. The First University
Fatima Al-Fihri (800–880 A.D.) was the daughter of a rich merchant. She built the world’s first university — the University of al-Qarawiyyin (or Karueein) — in 859 AD in Fez (which is now Morocco). Initially begun as a mosque for educational purposes, this was the first degree-awarding…
