SCIENCE. Between the ninth and thirteenth centuries Islamic civilization made major original contributions to the development of premodern science and transmitted Greek learning to Europe through extensive translations. The real emergence of modern science and crystallization of the scientific method, however, occurred in the massive revolution that began in sixteenthcentury Europe and left in its wake a world transformed both intellectually and materially. Traditional belief systems were challenged by the paradigm of a new culture based on experimentation, prediction, quantification, and control. Power relations between countries became increasingly defined by their mastery of technology, ultimately leading to the colonization by European nations of much of the Islamic world. For many traditional societies, and for some Islamic societies in particular, acceptance of the new scientific paradigm was-and in some cases still is-problematic both for its association with colonialism and for internal cultural reasons. Combined with global inequities in the distribution of power and wealth, this may be an important factor in explaining the disproportionately small representation in science and technology of Muslims, who constitute about 20 percent of the world’s population.
Historical Development. The introduction of postRenaissance science, technology, and thought into Islamic societies was pioneered by several outstanding individuals in the nineteenth century. In Egypt following the Napoleonic occupation, Muhammad ‘Ali seized state power and ruled from 1805 through 1848; during this period he made bold attempts to transfer French and British technology into the country, relying principally on European expatriates. He introduced the first printing press-a device initially condemned by some of the `ulama’ for having a belt of pigskin. This resistance was overcome, and the Bulaq press in Cairo published eighty-one Arabic books on science between 1821 and 1850. Technology for irrigation, textile manufacturing, surveying, prospecting and mining for coal and iron, and military hardware received high priority. Major earthmoving and civil engineering projects were begun. Even more significantly, technical schools with foreign teachers were established with the aim of generating manpower. More than four hundred students were sent to Europe to study various branches of science, including military tactics. However, the success of Muhammad ‘Ali’s industrialization policies was mixed. The quality of domestic products such as textiles was poor.
Technical schools provided insufficient exposure to theoretical science and failed to create a base of technicians or engineers of sufficiently high caliber. After Muhammad ‘Ali’s death in 1849 these schools were closed down under the rule of Khedive ‘Abbas and Khedive Said, and scientific momentum ground to a halt.
Among other nineteenth-century Arab rulers, Sultan Said ibn Sultan of Oman (1806-1856) was notable for his interest in acquiring European technology. He made numerous attempts to have sugar refineries installed in Zanzibar, an Omani possession, as well as unsuccessful attempts at shipbuilding. Amir `Abd al-Qadir of Algeria (r. 1832-1847) engaged various experts to build small ordnance factories and appears to have understood the importance of technology for progress.
The Turkish Ottomans established an extensive and magnificent empire in the sixteenth century and soon recognized the utility of military technology, particularly cannons, which they readily borrowed from the West. Strong religious taboos, however, prevented the use of such innovations as the printing press or public clocks. Travelers to Turkey in this period remarked on the lack of interest in matters of science and learning. Sweeping changes in civil administration and education came with Sultan Selim III (1761-18o8), the last and the most radical of the Ottoman reformers. Selim established a new military corps armed and organized in the most modern European techniques of warfare. Gunfounding was introduced, printing presses were set up, and the works of Western authors were translated into Turkish. To sustain the modern army the subjects of algebra, trigonometry, mechanics, ballistics, and metallurgy were introduced into the teaching curriculum. Like Muhammad ‘Ali, Selim had no choice but to import teachers from Europe for these subjects. The importance of theoretical science as a basis for continued development appears not to have been recognized. The major impetus to scientific and industrial development came after the revolution brought about by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) in 1924. Before this education had been limited to the cities and controlled by religious authorities, but after the secularization of Turkey, control was taken over by the state and curricula revised to include modern science, mathematics, world history, and other secular subjects. Among Muslim countries, Turkey is today the most advanced in scientific research and in terms of the quality of its universities.
On the Indian subcontinent modern scientific ideas and techniques came in the wake of the English conquest. In preceding decades the rule of the Mughals had produced a civilization known for impressive architecture, literature, and poetry but with few achievements in the realm of scientific knowledge. The Mughals did not set up any universities or centers of learning. Some transmission of Western technology had taken place in the reign of Emperor Akbar (1542-1605), when Europeans came as traders. Notably, ships of large tonnage and forms similar to English ones were built, but they lacked such technology as compasses, gimbals, and navigational charts. Reading glasses were greatly admired by Akbar, but they appear to have been imported from France. After the banishment of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, in 1857, the English consolidated their rule and introduced modern education. A combination of shame, pride, defiance, and conservatism led Muslims to resist Western learning. Consequently, Muslims were at a substantial disadvantage relative to Hindus; for example, between 1876-1877 and 1885-1886, 51 Muslims and 1,338 Hindus took the B.A. degree at Calcutta; in 1870 only two Muslims, both of whom failed, sat for the B.A., while in the same year 151 Hindus took the examination and 56 received the degree.
The resistance of Muslims of the subcontinent to modern ideas motivated Sayyid Ahmad Khan (18171898) to become a forceful proponent of modern science and thought. He was convinced that the subjugation of Muslims to the West was a result of their scientific backwardness, and that this in turn was a consequence of the dominance of superstitious beliefs and of rejection of ma’qulat (reason) in favor of blind obedience to manqulat (tradition). He therefore set about the monumental task of reinterpreting Muslim theology, making it compatible with post-Renaissance Western humanistic and scientific ideas. Sayyid Ahmad Khan founded the Aligarh Muslim University, which provided Muslims of the subcontinent a unique opportunity for higher education. His articles in the periodical Tahzib al-akhldq, which included translations and explanations of scientific tracts as well as his interpretations of religious issues, were highly influential among upper-class Muslims. To maintain consistency with science, he argued that miracles like Noah’s Flood must be understood in allegorical rather than literal terms. This position brought him widespread condemnation and numerous fatwas against his fife. [See Aligarh and the biography of Ahmad Khan.]
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), also a supporter of Western science and modern ideas but an implacable opponent of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, was a determined anti-imperialist who inspired Muslims in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and India. Like his mentor Muhammad `Abduh (1849-1905), Afghani held that there, was no contradiction between Islam and science and that Islam encouraged rational thought and discouraged blind imitation. In 1870, because of pressure from the clergy, Afghani was expelled from Istanbul for advocating the setting up of a Dar al-Funun, a new university devoted to the teaching of modern science. He is known for his vitriolic criticism of those `ulama’ who opposed modern ideas and science.
Modernization and the introduction of science have inevitably raised the issue of choosing between traditional and modern education for Muslims or of devising an acceptable synthesis. Traditional Islamic education, with its emphases on teaching of the Qur’an and sunnah and on memorization, had remained essentially unchanged since the Nizamiyah curriculum was devised under the rule of Sultan Nizam al-Mulk in the eleventh century. Ibn Khaldun, in a comparative study of education in Muslim lands of the fourteenth century, pointed out that only in Muslim Spain and Persia were subjects such as poetry, grammar, and arithmetic included in the syllabi. Elsewhere, subjects unrelated to the Qur’an were regarded as too secular to teach to children. The Nizamiyah curriculum was faithfully passed on to subsequent generations and was adopted unchanged in Mughal India, until somewhat modified by Shah Wall Allah (1703-1762) to include arithmetic and logic. However, al-Azhar University in Cairo did have some scientific subjects in its syllabus, including mathematics and astronomy, even before the Napoleonic invasion. These largely reflected knowledge which had long since been superseded: the astronomy taught, for example, was based on a Ptolemaic model in which the sun revolved around the earth. Thus it was a prime goal of Muslim modernists to transfer Western models of universities and schools into their societies.
The spread of science teaching in various Arab countries-such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon-and on the Indian subcontinent was greatly aided by Christian missionary efforts. Although their purpose was primarily evangelical, they brought considerable intellectual stimulus based on new developments in the West. The first Western scientific institutions in the Arab world were the Syrian Protestant College and the Jesuit St. Joseph’s College, both in Beirut.
Scientific Achievements. According to an ISESCO (Islamic Educational and Scientific Organization) report of 1986, there are 628 science and technology research institutes and centers in Muslim countries, of which 173 are engaged in agricultural research. There are four desert institutes, 58 centers of medical research, 47 for veterinary sciences, 45 for energy, and 44 for industrial research. There are nine centers for nuclear studies, eight for space research, seven for biotechnology, nine for oceanography, and four in computer sciences. Pakistan has the largest number of research institutes (142), followed by Indonesia (70), Turkey (58), and Egypt (35). The quality of these institutions, however, is generally below that of those in more advanced countries. Recent and reasonably complete scientometric studies of Muslim scientific productivity appear not to be available. In 1976 a study by Michael Moravcsik counted 352,000 scientific authors of whom only 3,300 were from Muslim countries (“International Conference on Science in Islamic Polities,” vol. 1, Islamabad, 1983). A small-scale study conducted in 1989 showed Muslim authorship of physics papers to be 46 out of a sample of 4,168, 53 out of 5,050 in mathematics, and 128 out of 5,375 in chemistry (for this and other quantitative indicators, see Hoodbhoy, 1991, chap. 4). From publications quoted in the scientific citation index of 1988 it appears that Egypt (17) and Turkey (10.5) are relatively advanced among Muslim countries, although much below the level of Israel (72) and India (90).
According to a 1987 report on the status of scientific research in Arab countries authored by the Federation of Arab Scientific Research Councils, there are 82 universities and about 250 independent research institutions in the Arab world. The total number of academic staff is about 52,000, of whom about 55 percent are Ph.D’s. About 59 percent of all researchers are in Egypt. Expenditure on scientific research ranges from 0.02 to 0.5 percent of the gross national product, a percentage that is very low compared to that of developed countries. The report cites a survey showing that the number of papers by these researchers in scientific journals was about 20 percent of those published in India, 4 percent of those in the USSR, and less than i percent of those in the USA. The number of papers per researcher per year ranges between o.i and o.6. Reasons for this low productivity are stated to include lack of funds, excessive teaching loads, and lack of promotion incentives.
Although the productivity of Muslim scientists residing in their own countries is low, Muslims living abroad in the advanced countries are relatively much more productive, and several have been credited with important scientific discoveries. Mohammed Abdus Salam, together with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979 for fundamental work that unified the weak and electromagnetic interactions. (However, it should be noted that Salam’s Ahmadiyah sect, although it continues to claim adherence to Islam, was officially excommunicated by an act of the Pakistani parliament in 1974.) Salam has been by far the most articulate and effective proponent of Muslim scientific development and is the founder-director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), which has played an important role in stimulating scientific research in developing countries by inviting thousands of researchers to participate in research conferences and workshops in Trieste, Italy. The Third World Academy of Sciences, an offshoot of the ICTP, is also headed by Salam and receives some financial support from Muslim countries.
The global diffusion of modern technology has profoundly altered lifestyles in Muslim countries. It is not, however, easy to decide on the status of a country in the field of science and technology in a simple quantitative manner. One important indicator of the level of scientific-technological development of a country is the extent to which industry and manufacturing are part of its economy. This in turn is estimated by the “value added” in manufacturing, which includes machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, textiles, and other factors. Data on value added is published yearly in the Development Report of the World Bank. Indonesia and Malaysia are among the fastest-growing economies of the world, partly because of their success in attracting foreign investment and partly because of their own high investments in human-resource development. There has been a steady rise in value added for most Muslim countries, but absolute levels are still low: in 1983, of fortysix Muslim states, only twenty-four produced cement, eleven produced sugar, five had heavy engineering industries, six produced textiles, and five produced light armaments. By and large, Muslim states are consumers of technology and producers of raw materials, oil being the most important.
In the nuclear area, the domain of medium to high technology, Pakistan has the most advanced program among Muslim countries. It has one Canadian-supplied power reactor and a second, Chinese-supplied one in the process of installation in 1994, as well as an extensive uranium-enrichment program using centrifugal technology derived from the Netherlands and Belgium. It is the only Muslim country that has nuclear-weapons capability, and as of 1993 was thought to possess sufficient material to make between six and twelve Hiroshima-size devices. Before the destruction of its nuclear installations after the Gulf War, Iraq was estimated to be only two or three years away from achieving nuclear capability. Iran and Egypt have small, energy-oriented nuclear programs but appear to have no serious intentions of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Reactions to Science. The relatively slow growth of science and modern ideas in most Muslim countries has elicited three types of responses from Muslims. An extreme reaction, exemplified by Sayyid Qutb of Egypt and Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi of Pakistan, has been to claim that this is nothing to regret because modern science is guided not by moral values but by naked materialism and arrogance. Its emphasis on constant change is in contradiction to the immutable values of Islam, and its claims to high achievement and total dependence on human reason amount to worship of humanity. According to this view, scientific development is not possible-nor even desirable-in an Islamic society.
A second reaction has been to reinterpret the faith in order to reconcile the demands of modern science and civilization with the teachings and traditions of Islam. This school of thought has a historical tradition going back to the rationalist Mu’tazilah movement of the ninth century and to the work of Ibn Rushd, particularly his book Tahdfut al-tahdfut, in which he refuted the antirationalism of Imam al-Ghazali. In this “reconstructionist” tradition, it is argued that the world of God cannot be wrong, but also that the truths of science are manifest and real. Therefore the only issue is to arrive at suitable interpretations of the Qur’an, through careful etymological examination, wherever there is an apparent conflict between revealed truth and physical reality. It is held that Islam in the days of the Prophet and the Khilafah-yi Rashidah was revolutionary, progressive, and rational, and that the subsequent slide into stultifying rigidity was due to the triumph of taqlid (tradition) over ijtihdd (innovation). Muhammad `Abduh, Muhammad Rashid Rida, and Sayyid Ahmad Khan were the leading proponents of this point of view.
A third attitude has been to treat the requirements of science and modernity as essentially unrelated to the direct concerns of religion and faith. Its adherents are satisfied with the vague belief that Islam and science are not in conflict but are disinclined to examine such issues too closely. From this point of view, the preoccupation of those who search for Qur’anic justifications of the facts of modern science appears redundant and arcane. It is probably fair to say that this is the majority point of view among Muslims today.
It is interesting to examine Muslim attitudes toward major developments in science, and Darwin’s theory of evolution provides the most contentious example. The first major debate, which pitted traditionalist Muslim and Christian Arabs against rationalists and radicals, was initiated in 1884 following the publication of a work in Arabic by Shibli Shumayyil (1853-1917) favoring Darwinism. Expectedly, religious conservatives denounced Darwin’s theory as amounting to the denial of God and a refutation of the Qur’anic and biblical theories of creation. Even Afghani, otherwise a powerful proponent of science, derided Darwinism-although it appears that he had not understood or even read any of Darwin’s work. A few Muslims, such as the writer Isma’il Mazhar (1891-i962), did make serious efforts to understand Darwinian evolution and asserted the need to reinterpret Islamic theology in the light of established facts. Others, such as the theologian Husayn al-Jisr (1845-1909), sought to reconcile elements of Darwin’s work with Islam. A comprehensive account of this historical debate may be found in Western Science in the Arab World: The Impact of Darwinism, 1860-1930 by Adel A. Ziadat (London, 1986). The author concludes that an author’s religion-whether Muslim or Christian-was of secondary importance in this debate; Rather, it was largely a debate between religious men and secularists. In the contemporary Muslim world attitudes toward Darwinism are mixed. Teaching of the theory of evolution is allowed in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, and several other countries; however, it was removed from the syllabus in Pakistan in the regime of General Zia ul-Haq, and it is expressly forbidden in Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
It is harder to find specific Muslim responses to other major scientific developments such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, big-bang cosmology, or chaos theory. Following the standard criticisms common earlier in this century in the West-wherein Einstein’s relativity was taken to imply moral relativism and quantum mechanical uncertainty as an unacceptable limitation on the power of God-a few Muslim writers have continued to argue that these major ideas of science are in conflict with Qur’anic teachings. However, these seem to be isolated examples, and the majority attitude has been to ignore such issues or to accept them passively. Unlike the vigorous science-vs.-religion debates in Europe after the scientific revolution, there seems to be little discussion on the philosophical implications of modern scientific issues in Muslim countries, except perhaps in Turkey and Iran. The reason for this relatively low-level interest may be the increasing specialization of science and the difficulty of translating its ideas into ordinary language, as well as the reluctance of the `ulama’ to be drawn into new fields. However, some issues continue to be routinely debated and commented upon. One such issue is whether the new moon that determines the lunar calendar must be visually sighted, or whether its position can be predicted in advance with modern astronomical techniques. This becomes important and contentious especially around the time of `Id al-Fitr. In Pakistan a Ruet-i-Hilal committee has been formed by the government to make final decisions on this matter. Weather prediction is an issue on which there has been a considerable softening of the traditionally hard position that God alone knows and decides when it will rain, and that he has prescribed the namdzi istisqa (prayer for rain) so that believers may supplicate him; presently all Muslim countries maintain some form of meteorological department and provide weather information. Although orthodox `ulama’ maintain their position against the dissection of cadavers for medical training, blood transfusions, and organ transplants, this is now essentially disregarded almost everywhere in Muslim countries.
In recent years the applications, methodology, and epistemology of modern science have been severely criticized by growing numbers of Muslim conservatives. At one level, in close similarity with the radical critiques of science by the German “Greens” as well as European Marxists and anarchists, it is argued that the development and application of a supposedly value-free science is the prime cause of the great problems faced by the world today-weapons of mass destruction, environmental degradation, global inequities in the distribution of wealth and power, and the alienation of the individual among them. Others go a step beyond this and reject the validity of the scientific method as well as the notion of science as knowledge, believing that the goals and techniques of modern science, which are considered distinct from those of medieval science, will inevitably damage the fabric of Islam. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is declared to be a dangerous and illegitimate goal, and the only form of legitimate knowledge is that which leads to a greater understanding of the divine. The most articulate representative of this point of view is the Iranian-born scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who also argues that the word `ilm, the knowledge whose pursuit is a religious duty, has been willfully distorted to mean science and secular learning by Muslim modernists in an effort to make science more acceptable in Islamic societies. [See the biography of Nasr.]
The reaction of Muslim orthodoxy to the teaching of modern science in schools has been to demand basic changes. These include some or all of the following: introduction of all scientific facts with reference to God; dilution of the cause-and-effect relation to accommodate the divine will; rewriting of all science books by people of sound Islamic beliefs; highlighting of the former Muslim supremacy in science; and removal of names associated with specific physical laws (e.g., Boyle’s Law or Einstein’s Theory). It should be noted, however, that the Iranian clergy has allowed science taught in Iranian schools to maintain its secular character.
Islamic Science. Exponents of “Islamic science” argue that it offers an Islamic alternative to the challenge of modern Western science, which they consider to be reductionist and incapable of accommodating Islamic beliefs. Many individual proposals for creating this alternative science have emerged since the 1970s. However, given the absence of a centralized religious authority-an “Islamic Church”-the validity of these proposals cannot clearly be certified from the religious point of view. One fairly common definition of “Islamic science” is that every scientific fact and phenomenon known today was anticipated fourteen hundred years ago, and that all scientific predictions can and must be based upon study of the Qur’an. This has been the concern of dozens of conferences in numerous Muslim countries, including Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia. A popular author who advocates this version of Islamic science is Maurice Bucaille, a French surgeon who became a spiritualist. His major book, The Bible, the Qur’an, and Science, seeks to establish that the Qur’an correctly anticipated all major discoveries of science while the Bible was flawed in places; it has been translated into several languages and is read widely in Muslim countries.
Another opinion is that Islamic science is knowledge that is based on Islamic values and beliefs such as tawhid (unity of God), `ibadah (worship), khildfah (trusteeship), and that stands for the rejection of zalim (tyrannical) science as well as science for the sake of curiosity. Revelation rather than reason ought to be the ultimate guide to valid knowledge. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1982) asserts that “a truly Islamic science cannot but derive ultimately from the intellect which is Divine and not human reason . . . the seat of the intellect is the heart rather than the head, and reason is no more than its reflection upon the mental plane.” He provides no further suggestions as to how the new science should be organized. Other Muslim authors insist that the study of natural disasters, which constitutes Islamic environmental science, must begin with trying to understand God’s will, because earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and so on are events under his direct control and part of a grand scheme. One of the most articulate advocates of the islamization of knowledge, including science, was the late Isma’il al-Faruqi. [See Education, article on Islamization of Knowledge; and the biography of Faruqi. ]
One should distinguish science practiced by Muslims-whether in the present epoch or in the golden age of Islamic civilization-from “Islamic science,” which is supposed to reflect specifically Islamic characteristics. The claim that an Islamic science of the physical world is a meaningful concept can be challenged on at least three grounds. First, decades of efforts to create a specifically Islamic science have failed. The fact is that Islamic science has not led to the building of a single new machine or instrument, the design of a new experiment, or the discovery of a new and testable fact. Only postfacto explanations have been provided, never a prediction. Second, specifying a set of moral and theological principles, no matter how elevated, does not permit one to build a new science from scratch. There are numerous examples of scientists subscribing to very different philosophical assumptions and having very different emotional and psychological dispositions, who have nonetheless arrived at very similar results in their scientific investigations. Although a scientist may be inspired to make a particular discovery as a consequence of his belief, his claims of discovery must be validated by a system of science that relies on experimentation and testing as its basis. Third, there has never existed a definition of Islamic science acceptable to Muslims universally. Many of the great Muslim scholars of medieval times, including al-Kindi, al-Razi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, suffered persecution at the hands of the orthodoxy because of their nontraditional religious and spiritual beliefs. The sectarian divisions among Muslims today would be reflected in any endeavor to establish a common set of rules. It is also worthy of note that all suggestions for creating a new epistemology of science based on ideological or moral principles have proved to be of little value because they have been far too vague and ill-defined.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gottstein, Klaus, ed. Islamic Cultural Identity and ScientificTechnological Development. Baden-Baden, 1986. Collection of papers dealing with questions of cultural diversity and identity, and science and development in Muslim countries.
Hoodbhoy, Pervez. Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality. London, 1991. Critical account of the relationship between the scientific spirit and Muslim orthodoxy, covering both present and medieval times.
Islam: Source and Purpose of Knowledge: Proceedings and Selected Papers of the Second Conference on the Islamization of Knowledge. Hemdon, Va., 1982. Useful compendium of papers setting out the Islamic perspective on the nature and purpose of knowledge.
Issawi, Charles, ed. The Economic History of the Middle East, r8oo1914. Chicago, 1966.
Keddie, Nikki R. An Islamic Response to Imperialism. 2d ed. Berkeley, 1983. Authoritative account of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s life and thought, and his encounter with the antiscience orthodoxy of his times.
Kumar, Deepak, ed. Science and Empire: Essays in Indian Context, 1700-1947. Delhi, 1991. Useful collection detailing the introduction of science in British India.
Lewis, Bernard. The Muslim Discovery of Europe. New York, 1982. Details the encounter of Muslims with the modern civilization of the West.
Maryam Jameelah. Modern Technology and the Dehumanization of Man. Lahore, 1983. Scathing criticism of science and modernism from an orthodox Muslim perspective.
Mawdudi, Sayyid Abu al-A’la. Ta’limat. 3d ed. Lahore, 119721. Critique of modern education and sketch of the Islamic alternative, by a leading twentieth-century conservative.
Nast, Seyyed Hossein. “Islam and Modem Science.” In Islam and Contemporary Society, edited by Salem Azzam, pp. 177-190. London, 1982. Attack on the foundations of modern science and an appeal for a science based on Islam, by one of the best-known opponents of Western science.
Saqib, Ghulam Nabi. Modernization of Muslim Education in Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey. Lahore, 1983. Detailed analysis of Islam and modernity from an Islamic modernist’s point of view.
Tibawi, A. L. Islamic Education. London, 1972.
Troll, Christian W. Sayyid Ahmad Khan: A Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology. Karachi, 1978. Traces the evolution of Sayyid Ahmad Khan from a staunch Muslim conservative into an outstanding exponent of modernism in British India.
Zahlan, A. B. Science and Science Policy in the Arab World. New York, 1980. Valuable if somewhat dated work on science and technological levels in Arab countries.
PERVEZ HOODBHOY