Most Significant Events Of The Middle Ages

The Umayyad conquest of Spain in 711 C.E. was perhaps the most significant event of the Middle Ages. Not only did it bring an end to the Christian Visigoth kingdom that had ruled the Iberian Peninsula since the fall of Rome, it also introduced technologies and sciences that had been developed in the Middle East. Advances in natural science, medicine, mathematics, agriculture, manufacturing and chemistry, to name a few, found their way into Al-Andalus. During the Medieval age the Arab Muslims led the world in the pursuit of knowledge. While the majority of Europe lay in the midst of an intellectual doldrums the Muslims were saving and translating the works of Greek philosophers; moreover, they were expanding on those works and generating a multitude

Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi (936-1013C.E.) was considered the greatest surgeon of medieval times and has been described by many as the father of modern surgery. Al-Zahrawi’s seminal work was Kitab Al-Tasrif, known in English as The Method of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia containing the knowledge he had accumulated through years of medical practice. His treatise was the primary source for medical knowledge in Europe for centuries. Al-Zahrawi was also known for inventing and introducing over two hundred medical instruments. He understood that relying on ancient methods of medicine that do not work well would not advance medicine. He believed his educated opinion based on his own experience was greater to that of the ancients, “whatever skill I have, I have derived for myself by my long reading of the books of the Ancients and my thirst to understand them until I extracted the knowledge of it from them. Then through the whole of my life I have adhered to experience and practice…I have made it accessible for you and rescued it from the abyss of prolixity” Al-Zahrawi’s research on the techniques and instrumentation of medicine left an immense impression in both the East and West. Some of his techniques, such as the use of catgut for internal stitching, were in use well into the modern era. Al-Tasrif includes sections on internal surgery, amputations, eye and dental surgery, as well as the treatment of broken limbs and other wounds. Just over a century later another Muslim physician in Spain distinguished himself. Ibn Zuhr (1194-1162 C.E.) was the most well regarded physician of his era. He is known to have contributed the advancement of microbiology when giving the first recorded evidence of the scabies mite as well as giving an accurate description of several cancerous lesions. Arabic medical knowledge changed the face of medical care in Europe as it made its way westward