February 24, is the birth anniversary of an Iranian Muslim polymath, Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi. This day is commemorated in the Iranian calendar as the day of engineering. In this special program, we are going to touch briefly upon the life and times of this great Muslim polymath and introduce to you some of the great services he rendered to the world of knowledge and sciences.
The city of Toos is located in northeastern Iran. Mohammad ibn Mohammad ibn Hassan Toosi was born in Toos on February 24, 1201. He became a great scientist and was known as Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi. Khajeh Nasireddin started his education in his birthplace. He learned Arabic to be able to read the works of great scholars of his era. Then he learned the basics of logic from his own uncle and then studied mathematics, arithmetic, geometry and algebra closely. In the beginning of his youth, he went to Neishabour, one of the large cities of Khorasan region and a brilliant scientific center of that era. There were many scholars and philosophers in the city so that Khajeh Nasir could quench his inquiring spirit. At the time of leaving Neishabour, he had such a high mastery of various sciences that he had turned into a top scholar who didn’t need to attend the classes of other scholars.
The era in which Khajeh Nasir was born and raised was one of the very tough and tumultuous junctures in the Iranian history as it coincided with the Mongol invasion of the country. Libraries and schools were destroyed and scholars were killed or displaced. Naturally, the Mongol invaders failed to grasp the scientific findings and were opposed to any manifestation of culture and civilization. The brilliant legacy of a civilization that left from the likes of Farabi, Biruni and Ib Sina (Avicenna) was destroyed by the Mongols. But the intellectual genius of Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi impressed and overcame the Mongol ruler Hulagu Khan, so that the Iranian polymath employed Holagu's power and influence in favor of his country and rendered great services to the knowledge and civilization of Iran and the world.
Khajeh Nasir, due to his influence on Hulagu Khan, urged him to reform social and cultural affairs and pay attention to scientists and artists. The Mongol ruler ordered the scientists who had taken refuge in Arabian Peninsula during the Mongol attack to return and reside in Maragheh. Thus many students gathered around Khajeh Nasir and embarked on scientific researches. In view of this, Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi set up a library and founded schools and colleges in different sciences and skills and appropriated stipends and payments for them. Creating such facilities caused many scholars and scientists from everywhere to go to Maragheh in northwest of Iran making the city as a leading centers of scientific studies and researches across the world.
One of the conspicuous achievements of this Iranian scientist was the establishment of a large observatory in Maragheh.
In 638 AH, Hulagu Khan allowed Khajeh Nasir to establish a large observatory in Maragheh and in addition to the government's financial assistance, the endowment all over the country was put at his disposal to help build the observatory. It has been written in historical books that the Maragheh observatory was a high and splendid building with a tall tower. Inside the building, constellations, along with pictures and maps of the planet were provided. The observatory was equipped with the best astronomical tools and other scientific equipment, so that for over three centuries there was no match for it in the west. As the construction of observatory was very important among the scientific circles of that era, scientists from distant regions would travel to the city to visit the observatory and benefit from Khajeh Nasir's knowledge. The library adjacent to the observatory had four hundred thousand volumes of valuable books that had been brought from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Algiers for the use of scientists and scholars. The library, in addition to laboratory facilities, granted the Maragheh Observatory the credibility and reputation of a major scientific academy.
Khajeh Nasir wrote and translated many books. Although he lived in a very turbulent era, these upheavals never stopped his scientific and philosophical work. One of the goals of Khajeh Nasir was to compile a collection of works that were left from the predecessors to provide them for the benefit of scientists and researchers of the next generations. In the field of scientific works, it seems that Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi preferred to comment and criticize the existing works rather than writing of treatises and new works. About 60 books and treatises have been registered by his name some of which include "Sharh-e-Eshaaraat" (an explanation of Ibn Sina's work Eshaaraat), "Tanbihaat" (on wisdom), "Tajrid ul-Aqaayed" (on the Islamic ideology and logic), "Akhlaq-e Naseri" (on ethics),"Asaas al-Eqtebas" (on logic), and "Tahrir Oqlidos (on geometry). Khajeh Nasireddin was one of the greatest Shia scholars in the field of logic and ideology. His work "Tajrid ul-Aqaayed" is one of the most important Shia theological texts which has been annotated several times by the next scholars.
Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi was a master in a variety of sciences of his era, but he was highly specialized in mathematics particularly geometry. He was the first to develop trigonometry without resorting to astronomy. Khajeh Nasir's writings on mathematics used to constitute part of the textbooks of university students across the world, as some of his precious works have been translated into other languages and have been used by European scientists. He is the first scientist who introduced trigonometry as a separate and independent science. One of the well-known French mathematicians says: "Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi was one of the great medieval scholars of geometry who wrote detailed books in every scientific field of his time and, in geometry, he proved many of the theorems of Euclidean geometry in other ways."
With the invention of precise observatory tools, Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi greatly developed astronomy and astrology. His work "Tazkera fi Elm al-Hei'a" (Treatise on the Science of Astrology) was the most perfect critique of Ptolemy's astrology and astronomy in the medieval period, and represented the only new mathematical pattern of planetary motion. This book had impacted the European astronomers such as Copernicus who had read the translation of the work. According to a study by scientists on the works of Khajeh Nasir, it has been found that he was aware of the geographical specifications of the western hemisphere while Christopher Columbus voyaged to the region two centuries after the era of the Iranian scientist and the region which was later on called America which was adopted from the name of his compatriot, the Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci. This knowledge, which was acquired by Soviet scientists from Khajeh Nasir's astronomical tables, appeared in the journal "The Soviet Union Today" in an article titled "Another Pioneer of Columbus".
Another feature which makes Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi superior to other scholars is his fluency and literary mastery. This has put him among the great literary figures and writers. Unlike the writers of the Mongol period, one of the features of his writing style is simplicity, so that he expresses the most difficult points in simple words. Studying the books "Akhlaq-e Naseri" (Naseri ethics), Seir-o Soluk" (Journey toward self-building and purification of spirit) and "Aaghaz-o Anjam" (Beginning and End) in Farsi and "Sharh-e Eshaaraat" in Arabic reveals the high command of this Iranian scholar in Arabic and Farsi prose as he has put complicated gnostic teachings in simple and beautiful prose. The major part of Khajeh Nasireddin's treatise and letters have been written in Arabic. His vast knowledge and influence is comparable to Ibn Sina (Avicenna), except that the latter was a better physician and Toosi was a better mathematician.
In 672 AH, this great Iranian scientist went to Baghdad with a group of his students to collect the remains of the Iranian books pillaged by Mongol invaders, and return them to Maragheh. But he passed away in Kazemain near Baghdad. To appreciate the valuable services rendered by Khajeh Nassireddin Toosi to different sciences, various measures have been taken such as the naming of a 60-kilometer volcanic crater in the southern hemisphere of the moon on his honour. In addition, an asteroid discovered by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernich in 1979, was called Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, a university was established in Tehran and named Khajeh Nasireddin Toosi University of Technology. In order to appreciate his valuable services, the birth anniversary of this great scientist has been dubbed as the Day of Engineering.
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