No one can overlook the Arabic legacy in the language of science. Words such as algebra, algorithm, alchemy, alcohol, and zenith carry traces of a remarkable Golden Age shaped by scholars across the Arab-Islamic world.
ByProf. Shirin Haque | September 2026
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Yes, indeed—but a name can also carry tell-tale stories about its origin and its importance to a people, particularly when names have had to be translated or adapted into another language and later adopted by others.
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but can a word paint a picture from a thousand years ago? That is where we will begin this journey: exploring the contributions of the Arabs to science, particularly to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. We will focus on the scientific contributions of the Arabs through the English words we commonly use.
The Arabs valued learning and were guided by the notion that “the scholar’s ink is holier than the blood of martyrs.” They built on the scholarship of the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Indians, predominantly by collating and translating their works at key centres of learning, such as the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and thereafter building on that knowledge. The work of translation removed the barriers created by multiple languages, which often hindered and slowed the process of learning and discovery. The echoes of this remain in Western science and scholarship, particularly in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Language is a wonderful thing. Trace the origin of a word, and it will often lead you to the cultural value it holds for a people.
It is generally thought that being Arab means being from the Arabic-speaking world. About a thousand years ago, during the Arab Golden Age (approximately 750 to 1258 CE), the Arab world encompassed a vast area spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of Southern Europe, with Arabic serving as a common language across much of this region. It brought together Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
What do the words alkali, alcohol, aldehyde, alchemy, almanac, Aldebaran, algebra, and algorithm have in common? Apart from the obvious clue that they begin with “al-,” they are all Arabic in origin. These words offer clues to what the Arabs were exploring and studying. They come from the fields of chemistry (alkali, alcohol, aldehyde, alchemy), astronomy (almanac, Aldebaran), and mathematics (algebra, algorithm). Names of things are a record of history. This can be a double-edged sword, as a name can guide us or lead us astray when it is a misnomer.
Ask any student, “Who invented Pythagoras’ theorem?” and you will likely hear a resounding, “Pythagoras!” Name it to own it, it seems! That, of course, is not true. No one really knows who invented what we call Pythagoras’ theorem, which every schoolchild must learn. It appears, in some form or another, almost a thousand years before Pythagoras in the cuneiform tablets left behind by the Mesopotamians. The Egyptians used it in the construction of the pyramids, and it appears centuries earlier in the Indian Śulba Sūtras. Why, then, is it known as Pythagoras’ theorem? There is the hand-waving explanation that the Pythagorean schools were the first to prove it for all triangles. Or is it simply that the Greeks were great at branding?
As a professor of astronomy teaching the history of science in the multicultural Caribbean, it is very amusing to take my students to task by asking which scholars’ names they commonly know—Pythagoras, Archimedes, Socrates, Plato? All have heard of them. When asked how many know the names Al-Khwarizmi, Alhazen, Aryabhata, or Brahmagupta, hardly anyone does. Yet everyone does algebra in school. How many know the origin of the word algebra, which comes from the Arabic al-jabr and is associated with the Arab mathematician Al-Khwarizmi? This begs the question: Who was Al-Khwarizmi, whom few students of science have heard of, unlike the famous Pythagoras?
Al-Khwarizmi worked at Baghdad’s House of Wisdom around 820 CE and wrote Al-Kitab al-Mukhtasar fi Hisab al-Jabr wal-Muqabala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing). In this treatise, he developed what we now know as algebra, motivated in part by the need to solve problems arising from Islamic inheritance laws.
On the other hand, the term “Arabic numerals” is familiar to most students, but is it a misnomer, like Pythagoras’ theorem? Arabic numerals refer to the decimal numeral system—0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9—which originated in India between the first and fifth centuries CE. As mentioned, Arab mathematicians studied Indian mathematical texts and translated them in the eighth and ninth centuries. This numeral system reached the Arab-Islamic world, where it was transmitted and developed through the mathematical scholarship of figures such as Al-Khwarizmi before spreading throughout the region and gradually becoming known in Europe as the “Arabic numeral system.” Its adoption greatly facilitated mathematical calculations and eventually contributed to the replacement of Roman numerals for many mathematical purposes.
Al-Khwarizmi’s scholarship later spread to Europe, particularly through the work of scholars such as Fibonacci. Leonardo Fibonacci (c. 1170–1250) encountered the Hindu-Arabic numeral system and mathematics during his travels and studies in the Mediterranean, including his interactions with Arab scholars. He drew on this knowledge in writing Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation), which introduced Hindu-Arabic numerals and their practical applications to a European readership and became highly influential among European mathematicians and merchants.
One need only look to the zenith to see the Arabs’ contribution to astronomy. The word zenith comes from an Arabic phrase meaning “the way over the head.” It entered the English language through a copying error in the 14th century. So, what about the position directly below the observer, which we call the nadir in English? The word nadir comes from the Arabic phrase naẓīr as-samt, meaning “opposite the zenith”—and it, too, crept into English in the late 14th century.
Let us turn to the stars and their names. More than two-thirds of the names of bright stars are of Arabic origin, including Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Al-Nilam, Mizar, and Alcor, to name a few. Yet we are more familiar with the Greek constellations in the sky, such as Orion, Pegasus, and Cassiopeia. The astronomical text by the Greek scholar Ptolemy was originally titled Mathematikē Syntaxis (“Mathematical Composition”) and was preserved and transmitted through Arabic translations and scholarship. It is now known by its modern title, Almagest, derived from the Arabic al-Majisṭī, which in turn derives from the Greek title and ultimately means ‘the greatest.’
We have all heard of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take to this day upon graduating from medical school. It is named after the Greek scholar Hippocrates, who promoted the idea that health depended largely on a balance among four bodily humors: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. This system remained influential for more than a thousand years.
However, three medical scholars stand out during this period: Hippocrates (Greek), Galen (Roman), and Ibn Sina (Arab), perhaps better known by the Latinized form of his name, Avicenna. Yet only one of them is widely known as the “father of medicine.” Can you guess who is known by that title? The Greek branding continues.
Each of them made specific and noteworthy contributions to medicine. Galen was highly influential because his medical theories dominated medical practice for 1,400 years. Hippocrates’ contribution lay in promoting rational diagnosis and medical ethics, while Ibn Sina’s lasting influence stems from his famous text, The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb), a five-volume medical encyclopedia. He also wrote The Book of Healing (Kitab al-Shifa). His works served as foundational scientific and medical encyclopedias and were used extensively in Europe well into the Renaissance.
The Arabs have left a lasting legacy in medicine, including terms associated with pharmacology. The word “drug” is sometimes traced to the Arabic tiryaq or tiryāq, meaning an antidote or medicinal compound. Likewise, the word “alchemy” derives from the Arabic al-kīmiyā’, reflecting the important role of alchemical practices in the development of pharmacology.
Rumi said, “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” We have seen the power of words in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, where they continue to tell us about the contributions of the cultures from which they came. Remarkably, even these terms have survived for more than a thousand years, despite the destruction of large numbers of Arabic books in late 15th-century Spain under Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros. This was part of the Granadan purge and marked the end of Islamic rule on the Iberian Peninsula.
While the purpose of the book burning may have been to eradicate Islamic culture, language, and religion, its essence could never be completely erased; it remains with us in the words we use in English. Fortunately, some scientific, medical, and philosophical texts were spared and later translated into Latin, helping to transmit Arab scholarship to the West. Without the contributions of Arab scholars to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, Europe might have taken longer to emerge from the intellectual and scientific constraints of the medieval period, even as scholars across the Arab-Islamic world made remarkable advances during its Golden Age.
Leave a Reply