Industrial knowledge
The Arabs did not neglect industrial applications while they were conducting their theoretical research. The Arabs had great superiority in their industries thanks to their scientific knowledge. We know the results that their industries led to, even if we are ignorant of most of their methods. We know, for example, that they knew how to exploit the mines of sulfur, copper, mercury, iron, and gold. They were skilled in tanning and in the art of tempering steel, as the blades of Toledo testify. Their textiles, weapons, leather, and paper had a worldwide reputation, and no one had preceded them in many branches of industry until their time.
Among the Arabs’ inventions, we see what cannot be mentioned simply because of its importance, such as their invention of gunpowder, for example. Therefore, we will say a few words about it:
Gunpowder and firearms:
The nations of Asia have used various types of incendiary compounds in their wars since ancient times, but Europe did not know these compounds until the seventh century AD. It is believed that the one who brought them from Asia was an architect named Kalinicus. The Byzantines greatly benefited from these compounds in defeating the Arabs when they laid a siege to Constantinople. Emperor Constantine ordered Porphyry of Genette to consider them a state secret, although they were soon revealed. The investigations of Renaud and Fave led to the conclusion that these compounds, which were described in many ancient manuscripts, were composed of sulfur and some flammable materials such as some resins and oils.
The Arabs soon learned the composition of Greek fire, and this fire became so widespread among them that it became “an important factor of attack,” as those two authors said. The Arabs were adept at using it and throwing it in various ways. The news of the terror it cast into the hearts of the Crusaders is not unknown, as it was mentioned in their stories. Among them, Joinville declared that it was the most horrific thing he had seen in his life, and that it was a type of large dragons flying in the air. When Joinville became close to King Saint Louis, “he knelt and raised his hands to heaven and said, weeping: O Lord Jesus, protect us and our people!”
Figure 5-3 : Firearms used by the Arabs in the thirteenth century AD (in this picture you see an artilleryman holding a small cannon in his hand, holding it close to a flame to ignite a fire and throw a bomb, from that ancient Arabic manuscript preserved in St. Petersburg) .
This fear is not without illusion, that is, if Greek fire was useful in naval battles to destroy enemy ships, it was not so on land, and no historian has recounted that it killed any of Saint Louis’ men or anyone else on land, and Greek fire enveloped Saint Louis and many of his knights without harming them, for Greek fire, although it is by nature to burn, was not suitable for throwing, and although it was thrown, it was not useful for throwing missiles, and although it was among the incendiary, it did not have the explosive properties of gunpowder.
For a long time, the invention of gunpowder was attributed to Roger Bacon, although Bacon did nothing more than borrow ancient compounds, particularly those described by Marcus Gracchus in a 1230 AD manuscript entitled *The Book of Fire for Burning Enemies*. Many of these compounds are, in fact, similar to the composition of gunpowder, but were used only in fire arrows. Like all medieval chemical compounds, they were undoubtedly borrowed from the Arabs. The Arabs had known firearms long before the Christians, as will be explained.
The investigations of Monsieur Renault and Monsieur Favia, who were preceded by Al-Ghazairi, André, and Viardot, proved that the Arabs were the ones who invented the easily exploding gunpowder of cannons that propels shells. The explanation for that is: those two authors saw at the beginning, as others saw, that the matter of this invention goes back to the Chinese, and they returned in a second memorandum that they published in the year 1850 AD, and that was after
They examined what was stated in some manuscripts that were recently found, and expressed their opinion, declaring that the Arabs were the owners of this great invention that turned the system of war upside down. Among what these two authors said: “It was the Chinese who discovered gunpowder saltpeter and used it in artificial fire… and it was the Arabs who extracted the propellant force of gunpowder, that is, it was the Arabs who invented firearms.”
Historians have agreed that the first battle in which cannons were used was the Battle of Crécy, which took place in 1346 AD. The truth is that Arab historians have proven in their writings many texts that indicate that the use of cannons took place long before that year. Whoever looks at the selections taken from the manuscripts translated by Conde will find, in particular, that Prince Yaqub besieged a rebel leader in the city of Mahdia in Africa in 1205, and that he struck its walls with various machines and bombs… that is, he struck them with machines that people had not seen before… each one of them threw large stone shells and iron bombs, which fell in the middle of the city.
Figure 5-4 : A piece of ancient Arab textile (photographed by Eber) .
We see this clearly in Ibn Khaldun’s history of the Berbers, where he mentioned the use of cannons in sieges, saying: “When Sultan Abu Yusuf conquered the Maghreb, he directed his resolve to conquer.
Sijilmasa (682 AH/1273 AD) from the hands of the Banu Abd al-Wad who had conquered it, and his call to it was more important than their call, so he rose up against it with armies and crowds in Rajab of the year seventy-two, and he fought it and had gathered to it the people of Morocco together from the Zenata, the Arabs, the Berbers and all the soldiers and armies, and he set up siege machines against it from catapults and rams and the oil tank that throws iron pebbles emanating from a cupboard in front of the fire lit in the gunpowder with a strange nature that returns actions to the power of its Creator, so he stayed on it for a year, fighting it back and forth until one day, suddenly, a section of its wall fell due to the insistence of the stones from the catapult on it, so they rushed to storm the city and entered it by force from that opening.
