History is infinitely elastic. The actions of one person in any age cause ripples that affect the lives of thousands who live downstream. Mahmud of Ghazna is important in Islamic history because his actions set the tone for the interaction between the world of Islam and the world of the Hindus. The tone of that interaction created a bitterness that has been exploited by extremists in the...

It was a moment in history when the Islamic civilization opened its doors to new ideas from the East and from the West. The confident Muslims took these ideas and remolded them in a uniquely Islamic mold. Out of this caldron came Islamic art, architecture, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, music, philosophy and ethics. Indeed the very process of Fiqh and its application to...

Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, (780 – 850 CE), was the grandfather of computer science and the father of Algebra. He was the popularizer of Arabic numerals, adopter of zero (the symbol, that is) and the decimal system, astronomer, cartographer, in briefs an encyclopedic scholar. BAYT Al-HIKMA (House of Wisdom) In the year 832, Caliph Al Ma’mun [b. Baghdad, 786,...

Fourteen years after Razia ascended the throne of Delhi (1236), another remarkable lady, Shajarat al Durr, became the queen of Egypt (1250). Like Razia, Shajarat al Durr was a Mamluke and a Turk. Specifically, Shajarat belonged to the family of Bahri Mamlukes, the Turkish tribe who had settled in the islands that dot the Nile. Those were turbulent times for the world of Islam. There existed at...