Islamic Scientific Schools

In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. Shafaq Ahmar: A Modern Understanding Introduction The disappearance of Shafaq Ahmar (the red twilight) marks the beginning of the time for the Isha prayer according to the overwhelming majority of Islamic jurists. For centuries, Muslims have relied upon direct observation of the western horizon to determine the disappearance of this red glow. However, atmospheric conditions, geographical location, seasonal changes, and modern light pollution often make such observations difficult or unreliable. Modern atmospheric science now provides valuable insights into the physical nature of twilight. Rather than replacing the juristic definition, these scientific findings help us understand what Shafaq Ahmar actually is and how it behaves in Earth's atmosphere. One of the most significant recent contributions is the 2024 study published in Scientific Reports ( Nature Portfolio ), which investigated the evolution of twilight bri...

In the Name of Allah---the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. Abū-ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn-ʿAbdallāh Ibn-Sīnā  [Avicenna] (ca. 970–1037) was the preeminent philosopher and physician of the Islamic world.  In his work, he combined the disparate strands of philosophical/scientific [ 2 ]  thinking in Greek late antiquity and early Islam into a rationally rigorous and self-consistent    scientific  system that encompassed and explained all reality, including the tenets of revealed religion and its theological and mystical elaborations. In its integral and comprehensive articulation of    science  and philosophy, it represents the culmination of the Hellenic tradition, defunct in Greek after the sixth century, and reborn in Arabic in the 9 th  (Gutas 2004a, 2010). It dominated intellectual life in the Islamic world for centuries to come, and the sundry reactions to it, ranging from acceptance to revision to refutation and to substitution with para...