TARIKH-E ELM
Year:2015 | Volume:12 | Issue:2|Papers Count:9

Alī Muḥammad Iṣfahānī (1215/1800–1293/1876), was one of the famous scientific figures of Qajar period who passed the formative years of his scientific and professional life in Iṣfahān, i.e. before being acquainted with the European sciences through the modern institution of Dār al-Funūn. Several scientific works of Iṣfahānī were written in the style of the ancient mathematical treatises like Miftāḥ al-Ḥisāb by Kāshī or ‘Uyūn al-Ḥisāb by Muḥammad Bāghir Yazdī, whereas his other works seem to have been written in the style of the pedagogic books of Dār al-Funūn. The historians have mentioned some titles among Iṣfahānī’s works which unfortunately are not available today and therefore the attribution of some innovations to Iṣfahānī remains ambiguous. One of the innovations attributed to Iṣfahānī is the discovery of the extracting the logarithm of the numbers. This attribution is repeated in some historical Persian sources such as The Diffused Articles by Abu al-Ḥasan Furūghī, The Algebra of Khayyām by Gholamhossein Mosaheb, The History of Islamic Sciences by Jalal al-Din Homaee, etc. Nevertheless, the historian of mathematics, Abu al-Ghasim Ghorbani, believes that the attribution of discovery of the logarithm to Iṣfahānī could not be more than a legend, though after examining some historical facts, Abd al-Hossein Moshafi shows that this attribution is not far from reality. In this article, after introducing this mathematician and mentioning the previous debates about the subject, I will try to shed some light on these ambiguities with the help of the extant documents.

Muḥammad Kaẓim ibn Riḍā Ṭabarī’s Ḥāshīya al-Maqāla al-‘Āshira min ‘Uṣūl al-Ḥisāb wa al-Handasa, written in the 13th/19thcentury, is in fact a collection of notes on the Muḥammad Bāqir Yazdī’s commentary on 10th book of Euclid’s Elements named Sharḥ al-Maqāla al-‘Āshira Min ‘Uṣūl Uqlīdus. In his commetary, Yazdī comments upon 67 propositions (out of 109 propsositions) of Euclid, and in the course of explaining Euclid’s demonstraions, he adds many useful points. Although Ṭabarī addresses almost all of the propositions of the 10th Book, a through analysis of his scholia shows that he made mistakes in several propositions and couldn’t understand the main concept of the 10th book of Euclid’s Elements.

One of the social and cultural developments produced during the Qajar period is the introduction of new methods of primary education. In fact, the methods used for teaching reading and writing abilities in the course of the last century are based on the theoretical efforts and practical experiences of the Qajar period. The most significant development occurred with the introduction of the new methods for teaching the alphabet. It was only after the widespread use of these methods that the genaralisation of public eduction and the the creation of a nation-wide educational network became possible. The development of modern primary eduction in Iran has been conditioned by several factors: the increasing number of the Iranian students graduated from foreign educational centers, the acquaintance of the Iranian elite with foreign languages and their alphabets, the influence of the new educational experiences made in the Ottoman Empire, and the establishment of foreing schools in Iran. In this paper we have a short look the early experiences in this field and the challenges they represented.

In almost all the literature produced on the introduction of modern science into Iran, Jāniwarnāma (1871), written by a physician and a faculty member of Dār al-funūn in the second half of the Qajar period, has been cited as a book which pioneered in familiarizing Iranians with the Darwinian theory of evolution. Although the book definitely covers some aspects of modern biology and paleontology and is worthy in its detailed historical research, as I will demonstrate, it is devoid of any evidence or trace of the Darwinian Theory. The reason (s) as to why Jāniwarnāma has so far been subject to such a widespread and strange misapprehension is an interesting topic in the history of science in Iran.

The introduction of modern astronomy into Iran has already been treated in some valuable papers. Most of these researches have focused on the first manuscripts written on this subject. Nevertheless, the fact remains that most of these manuscripts didn’t have a formative influence on the Iranian scientific community and didn’s lead to a rapid dissemination of modern astronomy in Iran. In this paper, we mention some social factors which influenced the spread of new astronomy in Iran. Among them, we pay special attention to the inauguration of the Dār al-funūn and the establishment of the Ministry of Science during Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh’s reign. We emphacise the role played by I’tiḍād al-Salṭana and ‘Abd al-Ghaffār al-Najm al-Dawla as well as the contribution made by some Iranian students graduated from foreing educational establishments in the dissemination of modern astronomy in Iran.

AMIR-A’LAM (1876-1961), a graduate from the medical school of Lyon, France, tried over 55 years to improve the health institutions and education of modern medicine in Iran. He was Professor of Anatomy at the Dār al-funūn and then at Tehran University, a member of Majlis-i ḥifẓ al-ṣiḥḥa (House of sanitation) and co-founder of many modern health organizations in Iran. He was the founder of the Ahmadiyya Hospital, founder of the first women's clinic (later became known as Amir Alam Hospital) and was the founder of the Red Lion and Sun Organization (Jam ’iyat-e sir o ḵorsid-e sorḵ-e Irān) and the Hazraty hospital of Khorasan. As a Member of Parliament, Amir Alam was responsible for passing of the Health Protection and Smallpox Vaccination Act and the Medical Practice Act (Qānun-e ṭebābat).It was at his official request, as the head of the House of sanitation, which vaccine production began at the Pasteur Institute of Iran. He worked with some of the Medical School professor to write a textbook on anatomy (Kalbadshenasi tousifi). He was a permanent member of the Persian Academy (Farhangestān) and involved in the proposal and approved for many medical terms.

It was in the Qajar period that the Iranins first became aquainted with some basic concepts of modern Newtonian physics. This article introduces and comments upon some general characteristics of the first books of modern physics written and translated till the year 1300 AH. Most of these texts are preserved in unique manuscripts and have often been written with the intentions such as donating the king or other governmental officials, or by the order of some state authorities. So they have not been used as a textbook in educational institutions, including Dār al-funūn. Among these works, a book entitled Jar al-Thaqīl wa ‘ Ilm-i Ḥikmat-i Ṭabī’ ī, written by Kriziz Namsavi (one of the first teachers of Dār al-funūn) and translated by Mīrzā Zakī Māzandarānī is the first book that has been published for the teaching of in modern physics at 1274 AH. Ḥikmat Ṭabī’ ī’Uṣul-i ‘ Ilm-i Fīzīk, written almost twenty years later (at 1295 AH) by an Iranian author, Nāẓim al-‘Ulūm, is the second book that was published in modern physics for teaching at Dār al-funūn. These two books deserve special attention because of their large circulation.

The thory of evolution was introduced toward the middle of the nineteenth century to Arabic readers through secondry texts, including a mixture of Darwin’s and other evolutionists’ ideas and sometimes tinted with materialistic ideas. In his polemical book named A Critique of the Philosophy of Darwin, Muḥammad-Riḍā Najafī Iṣfahānī did not totally refute the theory of evolution, but only the part dealing with the theory of human evolution which, in his view, went against the religious teachings. Compared with his Christian Arab counterparts, he could attain a better understanding of the theory of evolution, based on Arabic translation of a summary of the first chapter of Darwin’s The Descent of the Man, Ludwig Buchner’s writings and the scientific articles published in contemporary Arabic journals.Since some of the western biologists and evolutionists of his time did not accept the human evolution, he could grasp their ideas and add his own remarks to prepare some sort of “scientific” critique of this theory which, in its kind, was unprecedented.