Hajji Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد ابن بطوطة), or simply Ibn Battuta (February 25, 1304–1368 or 1369), was a Moroccan Berber Islamic scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo. With this extensive account of his journey, Ibn Battuta is often considered one of the greatest travellers ever.
Ibn Battuta travelled almost 75,000 miles in his lifetime. Here is a list of places he visited.
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia
* Tangier
* Fes
* Marrakech
* Tlemcen (Tilimsan)
* Miliana
* Algiers
* Djurdjura Mountains
* Béjaïa
* Constantine - Named as Qusantînah.
* Annaba - Also called Bona.
* Tunis - At that time, Abu Yahya (son of Abu Zajaria) was the sultan of Tunis.
* Sousse - Also called Susah.
* Sfax
* Gabès
Libya
* Tripoli
Mamluk Empire
* Cairo
* Alexandria
* Jerusalem
* Bethlehem
* Hebron
* Damascus
* Latakia
* Egypt
* Syria
Arabian Peninsula
* Medina - Visited the tomb of Prophet Muhammad.
* Jeddah
* Mecca - Performed the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.
* Rabigh - City north of Jeddah on the Red Sea.
* Oman
* Dhofar
* Bahrain
* Al-Hasa
* Strait of Hormuz
* Yemen
* Qatif
Spain
* Granada
* Valencia
Byzantine Empire and Eastern Europe
* Konya
* Antalya
* Bulgaria
* Azov
* Kazan
* Volga River
* Constantinople
Central Asia
* Khwarezm and Khorasan (now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Balochistan (region) and Afghanistan)
* Bukhara and Samarqand
* Pashtun areas of eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan (Pashtunistan)
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
* Punjab region (now in Pakistan and northern India)
* Sindh
* Multan
* Delhi
* Present day Uttar Pradesh
* Deccan
* Konkan Coast
* Kozhikode
* Malabar
* Bengal (now Bangladesh and West Bengal)
* Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh visited the area on his way from China.
* Meghna River near Dhaka
* Sylhet met Muslim saint Hazrat Shah Jalal Yamani, commonly known as Shah Jalal.
China
* Quanzhou - as he called in his book the city of donkeys
* Hangzhou — Ibn Battuta referred to this city in his book as "Madinat Alkhansa" مدينة الخنساء. He also mentioned that it was the largest city in the world at that time; it took him three days to walk across the city.
* Beijing - Ibn Battuta mentioned in his journey to Beijing how neat the city was.
Other places in Asia
* Burma (Myanmar)
* Maldives
* Sri Lanka - Known to the Arabs of his time as Serendip. Battuta visited the Jaffna kingdom and Adam's Peak.
* Sumatra Indonesia
* Malay Peninsula Malaysia
* Philippines - Ibn Battuta visited the Kingdom of Sultan Tawalisi, Tawi-Tawi, the country's southernmost province.
Somalia
* Mogadishu
* Zeila
Swahili Coast
* Kilwa
* Mombasa
Mali West Africa
* Timbuktu
* Gao
* Takedda
Mauritania
* Oualata (Walata)
During most of his journey in the Mali Empire, Ibn Battuta travelled with a retinue that included slaves, most of whom carried goods for trade but would also be traded as slaves. On the return from Takedda to Morocco, his caravan transported 600 female slaves, suggesting that slavery was a substantial part of the commercial activity of the empire.
See More at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_in_medieval_Islam
Abbas Ibn Firnas (810–887 A.D.), also known as Abbas Qasim Ibn Firnas and عباس بن فرناس (Arabic language), was a Muslim Berber polymath: an inventor, engineer, aviator, physician, Arabic poet, and Andalusian musician. He made an attempt at flight using a set of wings 1000 years before Right Brothers.
Work
* Artificial thunder, lightning and weather simulation: Abbas Ibn Firnas invented an artificial weather simulation room, in which spectators saw stars and clouds, and were astonished by artificial thunder and lightning, which were produced by mechanisms hidden in his basement laboratory.
Ibn Firnas designed a water clock called Al-Maqata, devised a means of manufacturing colorless glass, he invented various glass planispheres, made corrective lenses ("reading stones"), developed a chain of rings that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars, and developed a process for cutting rock crystal that allowed Spain to cease exporting quartz to Egypt to be cut.
In his house he built a room in which spectators witnessed stars, clouds, thunder, and lightning, which were produced by mechanisms located in his basement laboratory. He also devised "some sort of metronome."(Metronomes may be used by musicians when practicing in order to maintain a constant tempo; by adjusting the metronome, facility can be achieved at varying tempi. Even in pieces that do not require a strictly constant tempo (such as in the case of rubato), a metronome "marking" is sometimes given by the composer to give an indication of the general tempo intended, found in the score at the beginning of a piece or movement thereof.
Tempo is most always measured in beats per minute (BPM); metronomes can be set to variable tempi, usually ranging from 40 to 208 BPM; another marking denoting metronome tempi is M.M., or Mälzel's Metronome.)
See More at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_in_medieval_Islam
Crankshaft-driven and hydropowered saqiya chain pumps: The first known use of a crankshaft in a chain pump was in one of Al-Jazari's saqiya machines described in 1206. Al-Jazari also constructed a water-raising saqiya chain pump which was run by hydropower rather than manual labour, though the Chinese were also using hydropower for other chain pumps prior to him. Saqiya machines like the ones he described have been supplying water in Damascus since the 13th century up until modern times, and were in use throughout the medieval Islamic world.
Abū al-'Iz Ibn Ismā'īl ibn al-Razāz al-Jazarī (1136–1206) (Arabic: أَبُو اَلْعِزِ بْنُ إسْماعِيلِ بْنُ الرِّزاز الجزري) was an Iraqi polymath: a scholar, inventor, mechanical engineer, craftsman, artist, mathematician and astronomer from Al-Jazira, Mesopotamia, who lived during the Islamic Golden Age (Middle Ages). He is best known for writing the Kitáb fí ma'rifat al-hiyal al-handasiyya (Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices) in 1206, where he described fifty mechanical devices along with instructions on how to construct them.
* Crankshaft-driven screw and screwpump: In ancient times, the screw and screwpump were driven by a treadwheel, but from the 12th and 13th centuries, Muslim engineers operated them using the crankshaft.
* Double-action piston suction pump with reciprocating motion: In 1206, al-Jazari demonstrates the first suction pipes and suction piston pump, the first use of double-action, and one of the earliest valve operations, when he invented a twin-cylinder double-action reciprocating suction piston pump, which seems to have had a direct significance in the development of modern engineering. This pump is driven by a water wheel, which drives, through a system of gears, an oscillating slot-rod to which the rods of two pistons are attached. The pistons work in horizontally opposed cylinders, each provided with valve-operated suction and delivery pipes. The delivery pipes are joined above the centre of the machine to form a single outlet into the irrigation system. This pump is remarkable for being the earliest known use of a true suction pipe in a pump.
* Six-cylinder 'Monobloc' pump: In 1559, Taqi al-Din invented a six-cylinder 'Monobloc' pump. It was a hydropowered water-raising machine incorporating valves, suction and delivery pipes, piston rods with lead weights, trip levers with pin joints, and cams on the axle of a water-driven scoop wheel.
* Weight-driven pump: Most ancient and medieval pumps were either driven by manual labour or hydraulics. The first weight-driven pump was described as part of a perpetual motion water-raising machine in a medieval Arabic manuscript written some time after Al-Jazari. It featured a mercury-powered clockwork escapement mechanism and had two out gear-wheels driven by lead weights which mesh with a large central gear-wheel.
* Wind-powered pump: Windmills were used to pump water since at least the 9th century in what is now Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
Other mechanical devices
Al-Jazari's candle clock employed a bayonet fitting for the first time in 1206.
Drawing of the self-trimming lamp in Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir's 9th century Arabic treatise on mechanical devices, the Book of Ingenious Devices.
Diagram of a hydropowered water-raising machine from The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices by Al-Jazari in 1206.
* Artificial thunder, lightning and weather simulation: Abbas Ibn Firnas invented an artificial weather simulation room, in which spectators saw stars and clouds, and were astonished by artificial thunder and lightning, which were produced by mechanisms hidden in his basement laboratory.
* Bayonet fitting: Al-Jazari's candle clock in 1206 employed, for the first time, a bayonet fitting, a fastener mechanism still used in modern times.
* Boiler with tap: The Banu Musa brothers' Book of Ingenious Devices describes a boiler with a tap to access hot water. The water is heated through cold water being poured into a pipe which leads to a tank at the bottom of the boiler, where the water is heated with fire. A person can then access hot water from the boiler through a tap.
* Bolted lock and mechanical controls: According to Donald Routledge Hill, Al-Jazari first described several early mechanical controls, including "a large metal door...and a lock with four bolts."
* Complex segmental and epicyclic gearing: Segmental gears ("a piece for receiving or communicating reciprocating motion from or to a cogwheel, consisting of a sector of a circular gear, or ring, having cogs on the periphery, or face.") and epicyclic gears were both first invented by the 11th century Arab engineer Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi from Islamic Spain. He employed both these types of gears in the gear trains of his mechanical clocks and automata. Simple gears have been known before him, but this was the first known case of complex gears used to transmit high torque. His mechanisms were the most sophisticated geared devices until the mechanical clocks of the mid-14th century. Segmental gears were also later employed by Al-Jazari in 1206. Professor Lynn Townsend White, Jr. wrote: "Segmental gears first clearly appear in Al-Jazari, in the West they emerge in Giovanni de Dondi's astronomical clock finished in 1364, and only with the great Sienese engineer Francesco di Giorgio (1501) did they enter the general vocabulary of European machine design." Al-Muradi's work was known to scholars working under Alfonso X of Castile.
* Conical valve: This was a mechanism developed by the Banu Musa and of particular importance for future developments. It was used in a variety of different applications, including its use as "in-line" components in flow systems, the first known use of conical valves as automatic controllers.
* Control engineering: The work of the Banu Musa brothers, which included innovations involving subtle combinations of pneumatics and aerostatics, closely parallels the modern fields of control engineering and pneumatic instrumentation.
* Crank-slider mechanism: A crank-driven water pump by Al-Jazari employed the first known crank-slider mechanism.
* Design and construction methods: According to Donald Routledge Hill, "We see for the first time in Al-Jazari's work several concepts important for both design and construction: the lamination of timber to minimize warping, the static balancing of wheels, the use of wooden (a kind of pattern), the use of paper models to establish designs, the calibration of orifices, the grinding of the seats and plugs of valves together with emery powder to obtain a watertight fit, and the casting of metals in closed mold boxes with sand."
* Elevated battering ram: In 1000, the Book of Secrets by the Arab engineer Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi in Islamic Spain described the use of an elevator-like lifting device, in order to raise a large battering ram to destroy a fortress.
* pedal-operated loom: The foot pedal was originally invented for the purpose of operating a loom, for use in weaving. The first such devices appeared in Syria, Iran and Islamic parts of East Africa, where "the operator sat with his feet in a pit below a fairly low-slung loom." By 1177, it was further developed in Islamic Spain, where having the mechanism was "raised higher above the ground on a more substantial frame." This type of loom spread to the Christian parts of Spain and soon became popular all over medieval Europe.
* Fountain pen: The earliest historical record of a reservoir pen dates back to the 10th century. In 953, Al-Muizz Lideenillah, the caliph of Egypt, demanded a pen which would not stain his hands or clothes, and was provided with a pen which held ink in a reservoir and delivered it to the nib, though the method of operation is unknown and no examples survive. As recorded by Qadi al-Nu'man al-Tamimi (d. 974) in his Kitdb al-Majalis wa 'l-musayardt, al-Mu’izz instructed and commissioned the construction of a fountain reservoir pen.
* Gas mask: The Banu Musa brothers in the 9th century invented an early gas mask, for protecting workers in polluted wells. They also described bellows that remove foul air from wells. They explained that these instruments allow a worker to "descend into any well he wishes for a while and he will not fear it, nor will it harm him, if God wills may he be exalted."
* Gate operator: The first automatic doors were created by Hero of Alexandria and Chinese engineers under Emperor Yang of Sui prior to Islam. This was followed by the first hydraulics-powered automatic gate operators, invented by Al-Jazari in 1206. Al-Jazari also created automatic doors as part of one of his elaborate water clocks.
* Grab: The mechanical grab, specifically a clamshell grab,is an original invention by the Banu Musa brothers that does not appear in any earlier Greek works. The grab they described was used to extract objects from underwater, and recover objects from the beds of streams.
* Intermittent working: The concept of minimizing intermittent working is first implied in one of al-Jazari's saqiya chain pumps, which was for the purpose of maximising the efficiency of the saqiya chain pump.
* Spinning wheel: The earliest clear illustrations of the spinning wheel come from Baghdad (drawn in 1237), and then from China (c. 1270) and Europe (c. 1280). There is evidence that spinning wheels had already come into use in the Islamic world long before that, as can be seen in an Islamic description of the spinning wheel dating from before 1030, while the earliest Chinese description dates from around 1090.[verification needed]
* Trip hammer in papermaking: Muslim engineers introduced the use of trip hammers in the production of paper, replacing the traditional Chinese mortar and pestle method of papermaking. In turn, the trip hammer method was later employed by the Chinese in papermaking.
* Two-step level discontinuous variable structure controls: Two-step level controls for fluids, an early form of discontinuous variable structure controls, was developed by the Banu Musa brothers.
In the 9th century, the Banū Mūsā brothers invented a number of automata (automatic machines) and mechanical devices, and they described a hundred such devices in their Book of Ingenious Devices. Some of the devices that make their earliest known appearance in the Book of Ingenious Devices include:
* Differential pressure
* Double-concentric siphon
* Fail-safe system
* Float chamber
* Float valve
* Hurricane lamp
* Self-feeding lamp and self-trimming lamp: Invented by the eldest brother Ahmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir.
* Trick drinking vessels
* Plug valve.
* Self-operating valve
In 1206, Al-Jazari also described over fifty mechanical devices in six different categories in The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, most of which he invented himself, along with construction drawings. Along with his other mechanical inventions described above, some of the other mechanical devices he first described include: phlebotomy measures, linkage, water level, and devices able to elevate water from shallow wells or flowing rivers.
See More at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_in_medieval_Islam
Comments
Nepali Jokes