Science in Iranian History

Scholars from Iran and the wider Persian-speaking world made some of the most important advances in medieval science: al-Khwarizmi gave algebra its name, al-Razi and Avicenna wrote medical books used in Europe for centuries, and the observatories of Maragheh and Samarkand set new standards in astronomy. Most of them wrote in Arabic, the scientific language of the time, but they worked in Iranian cities under Iranian patrons, and their tradition continued into modern Iran.

Before Islam: Gondishapur and the Sasanian sciences

The Sasanian kings collected learning from Greece and India. Khosrow I (531–579) welcomed Greek philosophers expelled from Athens, and his physician Burzoy is said to have brought the Indian fables of the Panchatantra back from India, and according to the Shahnameh an Indian king sent the game of chess to his court. Astronomers compiled royal tables, the Zij-e Shahriyar, later used by Muslim scholars. Persian and Syriac physicians worked at Gondishapur in Khuzestan, and later Arabic writers described it as a great academy and hospital. Modern historians think that picture is exaggerated, but physicians from Gondishapur, above all the Bukhtishu family, did go on to serve the caliphs in Baghdad.

Baghdad and the translation movement

When the Abbasids founded Baghdad in 762, Iranian officials, astronomers and translators shaped its intellectual life (see Persian influence on the Abbasid Caliphate and the Barmakids). Greek, Syriac, Middle Persian and Sanskrit works were translated into Arabic. Out of this world came Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, from Khwarazm, whose book on “completion and balancing”, al-jabr, gave us “algebra”, and whose name, through Latin, gave us “algorithm”. His treatise on Indian numerals carried the decimal place-value system to the West.

The golden age of the 10th and 11th centuries

The Samanid and Buyid courts, and smaller ones like Khwarazm and Gorgan, competed to attract scholars. In medicine, Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes) of Rey ran hospitals, kept case notes and wrote the first clear account distinguishing smallpox from measles. Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980–1037), born near Bukhara, wrote the Canon of Medicine, which was translated into Latin in the 12th century and taught in European universities until the 17th; he is buried in Hamadan (see the Tomb of Avicenna).

In astronomy, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi of Rey produced his Book of Fixed Stars around 964, with the first known description of the Andromeda galaxy as a “little cloud”. Al-Biruni (973–1048) measured the radius of the Earth with a new method using the dip of the horizon from a mountain, wrote on India, minerals and calendars, and argued about whether the Earth rotates. A century later Omar Khayyam classified and solved cubic equations with geometry and helped create the accurate Jalali calendar of 1079 (see the history of the Iranian calendar).

Observatories: Maragheh and Samarkand

The Mongol invasion destroyed libraries and cities, but the Ilkhan Hulagu also founded one of the great scientific institutions of the Middle Ages. In 1259 Nasir al-Din Tusi began the Maragheh observatory in Azerbaijan, with a large library and a team of astronomers who produced the Ilkhanid Tables. Tusi’s geometric device, now called the “Tusi couple”, and the planetary models of his successors such as Qutb al-Din Shirazi resemble later ones used by Copernicus; whether Copernicus knew them is still debated. In the 1420s the Timurid prince Ulugh Beg built an observatory at Samarkand, where Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid Kashani, from Kashan, calculated pi to sixteen decimal places, a record that lasted for about 150 years.

Safavid and Qajar Iran

From the 16th century scholarship in Iran turned more towards philosophy, theology and law; the School of Isfahan of Mulla Sadra is its best-known product. Science did not stop: Sheikh Baha’i was a mathematician and astronomer as well as a jurist, and Persian physicians kept writing medical handbooks. But Iran did not share in Europe’s scientific revolution. In the 19th century, reformers responded by founding the Dar al-Funun in Tehran in 1851, Iran’s first modern school, which taught medicine, engineering and military science with European teachers.

Modern Iranian science

The University of Tehran opened in 1934, and many universities followed under the Pahlavis and the Islamic Republic. Iranian-born scientists have reached the top of their fields at home and abroad: Lotfi Zadeh, educated in Tehran, founded fuzzy logic; and Maryam Mirzakhani, from Tehran, became in 2014 the first woman to win the Fields Medal, the highest prize in mathematics. Iran today produces large numbers of engineering and science graduates, though sanctions and emigration of skilled people, a long-standing “brain drain”, have shaped the scientific community. For the place of women in this story, see women in Iranian history.

1. 6th c. Khosrow I patronises Greek and Indian learning
2. c. 820s Al-Khwarizmi writes on algebra in Baghdad
3. c. 900 Al-Razi on smallpox and measles
4. c. 964 Al-Sufi’s Book of Fixed Stars
5. c. 1025 Avicenna completes the Canon of Medicine
6. 1079 Jalali calendar
7. 1259 Maragheh observatory founded
8. 1424 Al-Kashi calculates pi to 16 decimal places
9. 1851 Dar al-Funun opens in Tehran
10. 2014 Maryam Mirzakhani wins the Fields Medal