The questions raised: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
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Thursday, October 29, 2009
The Story of a Violinist: People's Perception
This is the best true story being experimented.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah: Tragedi 4 Disember 1977
Daging berkecai di 'paya hangus' 
Tapak pesawat Penerbangan Malaysia MH635 yang terhempas di Tanjung Kupang, Gelang Patah, Johor pada 4 Disember 1977 kini hanyalah sebuah belukar tinggal. Ia menyembunyikan 1,001 misteri yang belum sempurna terjawab.
ANTARA faktor pemula kisah yang disiarkan ini ialah cerita-cerita yang disampaikan dari mulut ke mulut oleh para pemandu teksi di sekitar Johor Bahru. Mereka menyebarkan cerita tentang kelibat wanita berpakaian seperti pramugari pada waktu malam di jalanan sekitar Jalan Kebun Teh dan juga di Gelang Patah, Johor.
"Wanita itu meminta dihantarkan ke salah satu destinasi itu. Kawan saya pernah terkena sebelum ini. Apabila ditanya wanita itu kenapa dia mahu turun di tempat yang gelap dan bukan kawasan perumahan, wanita itu tiba-tiba ghaib dari tempat duduk penumpang.
" Ada pula yang sempat dijawab wanita itu. Katanya, 'bang, saya nak cari tangan saya yang putus'. Gugur jantung saya," cerita seorang pemandu teksi, Yusof Mohamad, yang menggeleng-gelengka n kepala sambil berdoa dirinya tidak diuji dengan pengalaman seperti itu. 
Ramai orang di bandar raya Johor Bahru maklum tentang kisah seram tersebut. Sama ada mendapat respons ketawa atau rasa takut yang melampau, ia sebenarnya merantai ingatan mereka terhadap sebuah tragedi dahsyat yang pernah berlaku lebih tiga dekad lalu.
Isnin 4 Disember 1977 adalah tarikh yang paling mendukacitakan dalam sejarah Penerbangan Malaysia (MAS). Penerbangan MH653 yang membawa seramai 93 penumpang bersama tujuh anak kapal telah meletup dan terhempas di sebuah kawasan paya bakau di Tanjung Kupang, Gelang Patah, Johor.
Rangka pesawat yang berlepas dari Lapangan Terbang Antarabangsa Pulau Pinang itu berkecai dan terbakar hingga meranapkan muka bumi seluas kira-kira dua kilometer persegi dari titik hentamannya.
Kegemparan itu mengejutkan sekalian penduduk kampung nelayan di situ. Ada yang berkurung dan segera menutup pintu kerana ketakutan. Ada pula penduduk yang berani bergegas ke tempat kejadian.
"Saya ternampak gugusan api yang marak menyala di langit. Sejurus ia terhempas ke bumi, bergegar jadinya kawasan ini. Semua orang terdiam dan berdebar-debar, " ujar seorang warga Kampung Tanjung Kupang, Ahmad Puteh, yang sewaktu kejadian itu berusia 26 tahun dan masih bujang. 
NAHAS MH653 mendapat perhatian ramai termasuk Tengku Mahkota Johor, Perdana Menteri, Allahyarham Datuk Hussein Onn (kini Tun), Menteri Perhubungan, Mendiang Tan Sri Manickavasagam dan Timbalan Mufti Johor, Datuk Ahmad Awang.
Segalanya masih jelas dalam memori nelayan berusia 58 tahun itu. Menurutnya, hanya selepas setengah jam, baru dia nekad untuk melihat 'raksasa' apakah yang jatuh ke kampungnya itu.
Kutip duit berguni
Dalam gelap malam yang diterangi api yang masih marak, orang kampung sungguh terkejut apabila mendapat tahu yang jatuh itu adalah bangkai kapal terbang.
"Sebelum kedatangan pihak berkuasa, saya melihat beberapa orang kampung sibuk mengutip sesuatu di tanah. Duit berselerak macam daun pokok getah.
"Malah ada yang dapat kumpul hingga berguni-guni banyaknya," katanya yang tidak berani mengambil, namun tidak menafikan bahawa sesiapa pun akan tergerak hati untuk memungut not-not kertas wang ringgit, yen Jepun, dolar Amerika dan pound sterling di sekitar kawasan tragedi.
"Saya dengar cerita, beg-beg yang berisi pakaian dan barang kemas pun dijumpai orang kampung. Bila tengok barang-barang macam itu, mereka pun 'menyelit-nyelit' lah.
"Paling kecoh, apabila ada seorang yang ternampak cincin lalu ingin memungutnya secara diam-diam. Rupa-rupanya, cincin itu masih tersemat pada sebatang jari yang sudah putus!" kata seorang suri rumah, Zaiton Dol, 47, tentang tabiat rakus orang kampung.
"Entah siapa agaknya yang membawa wang tunai begitu banyak. Tapi bila difikirkan balik, memang ramai orang kenamaan dalam kapal terbang itu, kan ? Mesti barang-barang itu milik mereka," katanya. 
Selain mengorbankan seorang usahawan Jepun, Tomio Gotto, dan Duta Cuba ke Malaysia, Mario Garcia serta isterinya, tragedi pesawat MH653 itu turut meragut nyawa Menteri Pertanian, Datuk Seri Ali Ahmad, Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Kerja Raya, Tan Sri Mahfuz Khalid, Pengarah Kerja Raya Bahagian Tentera, Datuk Khalid Mohamad, dan Timbalan Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Perikanan, Abu Bakar Othman Merican.
Selain itu, dua orang pegawai Bank Dunia, O.D. Hoerr dan S.A. Naime turut terkorban bersama-sama puluhan penumpang dan petugas kabin. Tiada seorang pun yang terselamat dalam pesawat yang dipandu juruterbang Kapten G.K. Ganjoor dan pembantunya, Kamarulzaman Jalil itu.
Seorang lagi penduduk kampung yang teruja menceritakan kisah itu ialah Siti Rahmah Ismail, 39. Walaupun ketika kejadian dia baru berusia tujuh tahun, Siti Rahmah masih mengingati banyak perkara.
"Budak-budak disuruh tidak keluar dari rumah. Maklumlah, ibu bapa kami takut perkara buruk terjadi kepada kami. Keadaan semakin kecoh apabila pihak berkuasa dan keselamatan yang terdiri daripada anggota polis, tentera, bomba dan ambulans tiba tidak lama kemudian. Kerja-kerja menyelamat berlarutan ke lewat malam," imbasnya. 
MEMORIAL memperingati tragedi pesawat Boeing 737 MH653 masih dikunjungi ahli keluarga mangsa di Jalan Kebun Teh, Johor Bahru.
Keesokannya, udara kampung menjadi tidak nyaman. Ramai yang terkejut apabila terjumpa atau ternampak dari jauh kecaian daging dan tulang manusia yang bersepah dan membusuk. Lebih meloyakan adalah apabila isi perut yang terburai dilihat tersangkut pada ranting dan dahan pokok bakau.
"Ramai yang tidak boleh tidur malam kerana dibayangi pemandangan itu. Apatah lagi mereka diganggu mimpi ngeri, terutama mereka yang telah mencuri simpan barang peribadi milik mangsa nahas," kata Ahmad.
"Siapa yang mengambil milik orang pada malam kejadian, terimalah habuannya. Mereka tidak tenang. Sampai ada yang sakit seperti terkena badi hingga terpaksa dibawa berubat," tambah Zaiton pula.
Suara jeritan
Ahmad mengakui, selama beberapa tahun, Kampung Tanjung Kupang terutama di kawasan tragedi itu seperti berhantu. Semua orang takut untuk melaluinya.
"Kalau menaiki motosikal di daratan atau menaiki bot di sebelah paya bakau itu, pasti akan terdengar suara-suara kelam seperti orang menjerit, meratap dan memekik meminta tolong.
"Penghuni rumah yang paling dekat dengan tempat kemalangan juga telah lama berpindah sejak tragedi itu berlaku," kata Ahmad mengenai sebuah rumah tinggal yang terletak kira-kira 100 meter dari rebakan api bangkai MH653.
Kru Jurnal yang mengunjungi Tanjung Kupang kelmarin nekad 'menceroboh' masuk tapak tragedi walaupun mengetahui laluan masuknya sudah dipagar kerana telah menjadi milik Pelabuhan Tanjung Pelepas (PTP). Sewaktu memperlahankan kereta di sebatang jalan yang sempit, tidak pula terasa apa-apa yang meremangkan bulu roma. 
SELAIN tapak tragedi, balai polis lama di Tanjung Kupang ini juga sudah menjadi sejarah lantaran tidak lagi berfungsi.
Semakin kereta kami ditelan belukar yang kian meliar, bau busuk tiba-tiba menusuk hidung. Namun, bau itu bukan daripada bau reputan daging manusia seperti yang diceritakan sebelumnya. Saat tiba di penghujung jalan, kami menemui sebuah kandang lembu yang diusahakan oleh seorang penduduk kampung, Mohamad Nor Kamaludin, 34.
"Daripada kawasan ini terbiar, biarlah saya memanfaatkannya. Lagipun kandang ini hanya sementara," kata Mohamad yang seakan-akan tahu tujuan kedatangan kami.
"Memang di sinilah tempat kapal terbang itu jatuh. Kisah tragedi itu sudah lama berlalu, tak ada apa pun yang menakutkan di sini. Silakanlah ambil gambar. Orang kata, masih ada tayar kapal terbang di hujung tanah sana . Kalau ada pun, pasti dah tenggelam ke dalam lumpur," ujarnya.
Menurut sumber daripada Pelabuhan Tanjung Pelepas, tempat tragedi pesawat MH653 itu adalah sebahagian daripada kawasan paya seluas 800 hektar milik kerajaan yang kini diletakkan di bawah jagaan PTP secara konsesi. Ia sekadar dirizab sebagai zon bebas aktiviti manusia.
Paya hangus yang telah mengorbankan 100 jiwa itu kini hanyalah hamparan muka bumi yang mirip hutan sekunder. Wartawan Jurnalsekadar menemui sebuah terusan air dan benteng tanah laterit yang ditinggikan bagi memisahkan kawasan belukar darat dengan kawasan bakau yang semakin teranjak melebihi garis air laut.
Di situlah 32 tahun lalu berlaku sebuah tragedi yang telah menggemparkan negara.
Ihsan: http://www.ehoza.com/v4/forum/x-files-mistery-amazing/63901-daging-berkecai-di-paya-hangus.html
Thursday, October 1, 2009
REMOVING GALLSTONES NATURALLY
REMOVING GALLSTONES NATURALLY
by Dr Lai Chiu-Nan
It has worked for many. If it works for you please pass on the good news. Chiu Nan is not charging for it, so we should make it free for everyone. Your reward is when someone, through your word of mouth, benefits from the regime.. Gallstones may not be everyone's concern. But they should be because we all have them. Moreover, gallstones may lead to cancer. 'Cancer is never the first illness,' Chiu Nan points out. 'Usually, there are a lot of other problems leading to cancer.
In my research in China , I came across some materials which say that people with cancer usually have stones. We all have gallstones. It's a matter of big or small, many or few.
One of the symptoms of gallstones is a feeling of bloatedness after a heavy meal. You feel like you can't digest the food. If it gets more serious, you feel pain in the liver area.' So if you think you have gallstones, Chiu Nan offers the following method to remove them naturally.
The treatment is also good for those with a weak liver, because the liver and gallbladder are closely linked.
Regimen:
1. For the first five days, take four glasses of apple juice every day. Or eat four or five apples, whichever you prefer. Apple juice softens the gallstones. During the five days, eat normally.
2. On the sixth day, take no dinner.
3. At 6 PM, take a teaspoon of Epsom salt (magnesium sulphate) with a glass of warm water.
4. At 8 PM, repeat the same. Magnesium sulphate opens the gallbladder ducts.
5. At 10 PM, take half cup olive oil (or sesame oil) with half cup fresh lemon juice. Mix it well and drink it. The oil lubricates the stones to ease their passage.
PS. 1cup=250ml, � cup lemon juice=3 lemons (aprox.)
The next morning, you will find green stones in your stools. 'Usually they float,' Chiu Nan notes. 'You might wan t to count them. I have had people who passes 40, 50 or up to 100 stones. Very many.'
'Even if you don't have any symptoms of gallstones, you still might have some. It's always good to give your gall bladder a clean-up now and then.
PASS THIS AND YOU MAY HELP OTHERS!
by Dr Lai Chiu-Nan
It has worked for many. If it works for you please pass on the good news. Chiu Nan is not charging for it, so we should make it free for everyone. Your reward is when someone, through your word of mouth, benefits from the regime.. Gallstones may not be everyone's concern. But they should be because we all have them. Moreover, gallstones may lead to cancer. 'Cancer is never the first illness,' Chiu Nan points out. 'Usually, there are a lot of other problems leading to cancer.
In my research in China , I came across some materials which say that people with cancer usually have stones. We all have gallstones. It's a matter of big or small, many or few.
One of the symptoms of gallstones is a feeling of bloatedness after a heavy meal. You feel like you can't digest the food. If it gets more serious, you feel pain in the liver area.' So if you think you have gallstones, Chiu Nan offers the following method to remove them naturally.
The treatment is also good for those with a weak liver, because the liver and gallbladder are closely linked.
Regimen:
1. For the first five days, take four glasses of apple juice every day. Or eat four or five apples, whichever you prefer. Apple juice softens the gallstones. During the five days, eat normally.
2. On the sixth day, take no dinner.
3. At 6 PM, take a teaspoon of Epsom salt (magnesium sulphate) with a glass of warm water.
4. At 8 PM, repeat the same. Magnesium sulphate opens the gallbladder ducts.
5. At 10 PM, take half cup olive oil (or sesame oil) with half cup fresh lemon juice. Mix it well and drink it. The oil lubricates the stones to ease their passage.
PS. 1cup=250ml, � cup lemon juice=3 lemons (aprox.)
The next morning, you will find green stones in your stools. 'Usually they float,' Chiu Nan notes. 'You might wan t to count them. I have had people who passes 40, 50 or up to 100 stones. Very many.'
'Even if you don't have any symptoms of gallstones, you still might have some. It's always good to give your gall bladder a clean-up now and then.
PASS THIS AND YOU MAY HELP OTHERS!
How Islamic Inventors Changed The World
How Islamic inventors changed the world From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and identifies the men of genius behind them
The Independent, UK: Saturday, 11 March 2006
1 The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caff� and then English coffee.
2 The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.
3 A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe - where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.
4 A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.
5 Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders' most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV.
6 Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and filtration. As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.
7 The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.
8 Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders' metal armour and was an effective form of insulation - so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.
9 The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe's Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe's castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world's - with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V's castle architect was a Muslim.
10 Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.
11 The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in Europe.
12 The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it.
13 The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.
14 The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi's book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi's discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.
15 Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three-course meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).
16 Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, thanks to their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam's non-representational art. In contrast, Europe's floors were distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.
17 The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.
18 By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth". It was 500 years before that realisation dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth's circumference to be 40,253.4km - less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.
19 Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gunpowder, and used it in their fireworks, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships and then blew up.
20 Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.
"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World" is a new exhibition which began a nationwide tour this week. It is currently at the Science Museum in Manchester. For more information, go to www.1001inventions.com.
The Independent, UK: Saturday, 11 March 2006
1 The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in the City of London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian caff� and then English coffee.
2 The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical activity to an experimental one.
3 A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe - where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.
4 A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.
5 Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders' most striking characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian Vapour Baths on Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV.
6 Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost scientist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction, crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and filtration. As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern chemistry.
7 The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was the combination lock.
8 Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of insulating material in between. It is not clear whether it was invented in the Muslim world or whether it was imported there from India or China. But it certainly came to the West via the Crusaders. They saw it used by Saracen warriors, who wore straw-filled quilted canvas shirts instead of armour. As well as a form of protection, it proved an effective guard against the chafing of the Crusaders' metal armour and was an effective form of insulation - so much so that it became a cottage industry back home in colder climates such as Britain and Holland.
9 The pointed arch so characteristic of Europe's Gothic cathedrals was an invention borrowed from Islamic architecture. It was much stronger than the rounded arch used by the Romans and Normans, thus allowing the building of bigger, higher, more complex and grander buildings. Other borrowings from Muslim genius included ribbed vaulting, rose windows and dome-building techniques. Europe's castles were also adapted to copy the Islamic world's - with arrow slits, battlements, a barbican and parapets. Square towers and keeps gave way to more easily defended round ones. Henry V's castle architect was a Muslim.
10 Many modern surgical instruments are of exactly the same design as those devised in the 10th century by a Muslim surgeon called al-Zahrawi. His scalpels, bone saws, forceps, fine scissors for eye surgery and many of the 200 instruments he devised are recognisable to a modern surgeon. It was he who discovered that catgut used for internal stitches dissolves away naturally (a discovery he made when his monkey ate his lute strings) and that it can be also used to make medicine capsules. In the 13th century, another Muslim medic named Ibn Nafis described the circulation of the blood, 300 years before William Harvey discovered it. Muslims doctors also invented anaesthetics of opium and alcohol mixes and developed hollow needles to suck cataracts from eyes in a technique still used today.
11 The windmill was invented in 634 for a Persian caliph and was used to grind corn and draw up water for irrigation. In the vast deserts of Arabia, when the seasonal streams ran dry, the only source of power was the wind which blew steadily from one direction for months. Mills had six or 12 sails covered in fabric or palm leaves. It was 500 years before the first windmill was seen in Europe.
12 The technique of inoculation was not invented by Jenner and Pasteur but was devised in the Muslim world and brought to Europe from Turkey by the wife of the English ambassador to Istanbul in 1724. Children in Turkey were vaccinated with cowpox to fight the deadly smallpox at least 50 years before the West discovered it.
13 The fountain pen was invented for the Sultan of Egypt in 953 after he demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes. It held ink in a reservoir and, as with modern pens, fed ink to the nib by a combination of gravity and capillary action.
14 The system of numbering in use all round the world is probably Indian in origin but the style of the numerals is Arabic and first appears in print in the work of the Muslim mathematicians al-Khwarizmi and al-Kindi around 825. Algebra was named after al-Khwarizmi's book, Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah, much of whose contents are still in use. The work of Muslim maths scholars was imported into Europe 300 years later by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Algorithms and much of the theory of trigonometry came from the Muslim world. And Al-Kindi's discovery of frequency analysis rendered all the codes of the ancient world soluble and created the basis of modern cryptology.
15 Ali ibn Nafi, known by his nickname of Ziryab (Blackbird) came from Iraq to Cordoba in the 9th century and brought with him the concept of the three-course meal - soup, followed by fish or meat, then fruit and nuts. He also introduced crystal glasses (which had been invented after experiments with rock crystal by Abbas ibn Firnas - see No 4).
16 Carpets were regarded as part of Paradise by medieval Muslims, thanks to their advanced weaving techniques, new tinctures from Islamic chemistry and highly developed sense of pattern and arabesque which were the basis of Islam's non-representational art. In contrast, Europe's floors were distinctly earthly, not to say earthy, until Arabian and Persian carpets were introduced. In England, as Erasmus recorded, floors were "covered in rushes, occasionally renewed, but so imperfectly that the bottom layer is left undisturbed, sometimes for 20 years, harbouring expectoration, vomiting, the leakage of dogs and men, ale droppings, scraps of fish, and other abominations not fit to be mentioned". Carpets, unsurprisingly, caught on quickly.
17 The modern cheque comes from the Arabic saqq, a written vow to pay for goods when they were delivered, to avoid money having to be transported across dangerous terrain. In the 9th century, a Muslim businessman could cash a cheque in China drawn on his bank in Baghdad.
18 By the 9th century, many Muslim scholars took it for granted that the Earth was a sphere. The proof, said astronomer Ibn Hazm, "is that the Sun is always vertical to a particular spot on Earth". It was 500 years before that realisation dawned on Galileo. The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth's circumference to be 40,253.4km - less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139.
19 Though the Chinese invented saltpetre gunpowder, and used it in their fireworks, it was the Arabs who worked out that it could be purified using potassium nitrate for military use. Muslim incendiary devices terrified the Crusaders. By the 15th century they had invented both a rocket, which they called a "self-moving and combusting egg", and a torpedo - a self-propelled pear-shaped bomb with a spear at the front which impaled itself in enemy ships and then blew up.
20 Medieval Europe had kitchen and herb gardens, but it was the Arabs who developed the idea of the garden as a place of beauty and meditation. The first royal pleasure gardens in Europe were opened in 11th-century Muslim Spain. Flowers which originated in Muslim gardens include the carnation and the tulip.
"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World" is a new exhibition which began a nationwide tour this week. It is currently at the Science Museum in Manchester. For more information, go to www.1001inventions.com.
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