The scientific revolution of the Islamic world was one of the most fruitful periods in the history of science. It lasted from 700 to 1400 and proved to be decisive for humanity.

From Indonesia to the Iberian Peninsula, Arabic-speaking scholars in the Islamic empires of the early Middle Ages "appropriated" the Greek classical education, produced knowledge - which later diffused into European universities in the 1600s - and increased the overall scientific stock of our culture.

The contribution of early Islam to the sciences is open to interpretations, but when it comes to mathematics, the Islamic scientific discoveries are indisputable: in the 9th century, the "hero" of Arabic mathematics, Al-Khwarizmi, bequeaths to humanity algebra and the modern form of numbers.

The Egyptian Hassan ibn al-Haytham establishes integral calculus. In 1090, the brilliant Arab mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam invents complex second-degree equations and paves the way for Carl Friedrich Gauss (in the 19th century) towards the discovery of a new geometry for curved and multidimensional spaces.

What happened to the golden Islamic past of science? Why have only two scientists from the numerous Muslim countries been awarded the Nobel Prize? Why has the level of development in research and technology in Islamic countries (with their -non-democratic- secular governance) been so low until recently?

What does it mean that today, many states with Muslim populations (Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Qatar, etc.) are more than doubling their budgets for education, science, research, and technology?

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]