Bright Minds, Muslim Inventors- School Book for Young Children

8/2/2019 Bright Minds, Muslim Inventors- School Book for Young Children

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Bright Minds in theDark Ages

Great Inventors of the Muslim World

Fiona Scoble


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Fiona Scoble asserts the moral right to be identiedas author of this work. She wants to encourage thecirculation of this work as widely as possible withoutaffecting the ownership of the copyright, whichremains with the copyright holder. Users are thereforewelcome to download, save, perform or distributethis work electronically or in any other formatwithout requesting written permission, so long aswherever this work is used, Fiona Scoble is creditedas originator. The work must not be resold, in anymedium, under any circumstances, for nancial gain.

Ziryab was an amazing musician and also the coolest guy aroundin the ninth century. He started life in Baghdad as a gifted pupilof a master musician. He had to leave Baghdad and move toCordoba in Spain when he embarrassed his teacher by becomingbetter than him at music. When he arrived in Cordoba in 822he revolutionized their music and fashion and helped to makeCordoba one of the most stylish cities in the world.

Musical Magic

Ziryab was a rst class musician and loved his work. He used tocompose his songs at night, sitting with two servants who playedthe lute. He wanted to pass on his knowledge and establishedone of the rst schools of music. His schools accepted bothmale and female students and taught them how to sing andplay instruments. He always liked his students to experiment andmake new sounds and styles of music.

Ziryab was an amazing musician and also the coolest guy aroundin the ninth century. He started life in Baghdad as a gifted pupilof a master musician. He had to leave Baghdad and move toCordoba in Spain when he embarrassed his teacher by becomingbetter than him at music. When he arrived in Cordoba in 822he revolutionized their music and fashion and helped to makeCordoba one of the most stylish cities in the world.

Musical Magic

Ziryab was a rst class musician and loved his work. He used tocompose his songs at night, sitting with two servants who playedthe lute. He wanted to pass on his knowledge and establishedone of the rst schools of music. His schools accepted bothmale and female students and taught them how to sing andplay instruments. He always liked his students to experiment andmake new sounds and styles of music.


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One brilliant gift he brought with him to Spain was musicalinstruments from the Middle East. He brought the

Persian Lute (a stringed instrument which youpluck) to Cordoba, and this became the

Spanish Guitar (a guitar with six strings).He also brought passionate songs,

tunes and dances from Persia and

Mesopotamia. Later, mixed with Romaniand other inuences, these became the famousSpanish amenco.

Always looking for something new, Ziryabimproved instruments like the ud (which is like a lute). He added

a fth pair of strings and instead of using a pieceof wood to pluck the strings, he used a quill or aneagles beak (dont worry - the eagle wasnt still

attached).

Fads and Fashions

In the court at Cordoba Ziryab lived a life of luxury. Thecaliph paid him a huge salary andhe was free to compose andplay music as he pleased, but healso introduced elegance and

luxury to the court.

He introduced new games

to play polo and chessboth came to Europe fromthe Middle East. In fact,Checkmate in chess comesfrom the Persian wordShahmat, meaning The Kingis Defeated.

Ziryab livened up the dinner table. He brought new fruit andvegetables like asparagus, and introduced the three-course meal.

After the Roman Empire collapsed in Europe in 476 AD, eatinghad become a bit boring in Europe. Food was served plainly onplatters on bare tables. When Ziryab arrived he brought newtypes of food, fancy tablecloths and glasses, and he divided

meals up into a starter, a main course and a pudding.

The fashion spread across Europe and of course you still see allthese things in use today. So next time youre rushing throughyour main course, desperate to get to the pudding, think ofZiryab (dont you wish hed said that pudding should comerst?!).

Fashion also changed thanks to Ziryabs inuence. The Muslimswere experts at making beautiful materials and dying themamazing colours. Ziryab encouraged the Cordobans to changethe material and colour of their clothes for each season of theyear. Think of all the clothes shops you see on our high streets what would they do without Ziryabs seasonal fashion sense?!

Because we live in a time where TV and the internet allow us tosee what is happening all over the world, its difcult to imaginehow amazed the Cordobans would have been by all the newideas that Ziryab brought to them. If theyd had magazinesaround then, heres what they might have said


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Because these events happened so long ago, the story of Ziryabsinuence might have been a bit exaggerated each time it was

retold through the generations. It probably wasnt just Ziryabthat made all these changes in Spain - but Ziryab was denitely amajor part of the change, and his inuence in Spain has becomelegendary.


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A man of many talents, Abbas Ibn Firnas did a bit of everything,including poetry, astronomy, engineering and music. He spokeArabic but was also uent in Greek and made translations ofphilosophical and musical manuscripts. He lived in Cordobaunder the enlightened Umayyad Caliphate.

Classy Glass

Ibn Firnas was a bit of a genius at manipulating glass. Hedeveloped a technique of cutting rock crystal into useful shapes

and he discovered a way of making colourless glass using sandand stone. He established a large crystal industry in Andalusiabased on mined rocks.

Looking at his colourless glass, Ibn Firnas realised there was a lotmore to do with it than just making drinking glasses. He startedexperimenting with lenses and thinking of ways to magnifywriting for people with poor eyesight. He created readingstones. These were oval shaped pieces of glass that could be

placed on top of a piece of writing tomagnify it and make it easier to read.Reading stones were used until the late13th century when the modern idea ofspectacles reading glasses started

being used.

Amazing Planetarium

Ibn Firnas came up with another brilliant use for his glass heused it to construct an astounding planetarium. Planetariumsare theatres that are used for recreating how the night sky looks.Modern day planetariums can use computers to show how starsare born and how they appear to move around the earth.

Back in the 9th century, Ibn Firnas did something just as amazing.His planetarium not only had stars, it also had articial clouds,thunder and lightning! Naturally his 9th century audience were

amazed, and even now no one is quite sure how he managed it!

First Flight

As well as his other incredible inventions, Ibn Firnas is mostfamous for constructing a ying machine. It was the rst machineable to carry a human into the air.

His inquisitive mind led him to consider a lot of the things he sawaround him. He once asked himself,

What man-made machine will ever achievethe complete perfection of even the gooseswing?

In 875, at the age of 65, Ibn Firnas tried hisbest to copy how birds y. He made a yingmachine which had two large wings and was


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made with silk covered in eagle feathers. He tightened it with nestrips of silk and attached the wings to his arms.

In the Rusafa area on the outskirts of Cordoba in Spain, Ibn Firnasclimbed a hill and a large crowd of people gathered to watch hisattempt at ight. He made a speech to the crowd:

Presently, I shall take leave of you. By guiding these wings upand down, I should ascend like the birds. If all goes well, aftersoaring for a time I should be able to return safely to your side.Luckily, many of the onlookers recorded their eye-witnessaccounts of his ight. Heres what they said:

Having constructed the nal version of hisglider, to celebrate its success he invitedthe people of Cordoba to come andwitness his ight. People watched froma nearby mountain as he ew somedistance, but then the gliderplummeted to the ground,causing him to injurehis back...

We though Ibn Firnas certainlymad... and we feared for hislife!

He ew faster than thephoenix in his ightwhen he dressed his

body in the feathers of avulture.


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Ibn Firnas ew pretty high and hung in the air for over tenminutes, but then he plummeted down and crash landed. Hebroke the wings and a part of his back in the process. After the

ight, he realised that a birds tail is justas useful as its wings. They use theirtail to land and he crashed because hedidnt have one.

To honour Ibn Firnas fearless thinking,a crater on the moon has been namedIbn Firnas in his memory. The Ibn

Firnas moon crater is 89km in diameter lets hope the crater that Ibn Firnas left in the

earth when he crash-landed was a bit smaller!

Unfortunately Ibn Firnas injury meant he wasnt able to tryout any more ying experiments to test out tails on his ying

machine. 600 years later Leonardo da Vinci came up with newying machine ideas, and over 1000 years later the Wrightbrothers rst ew a plane.

Try It Yourself!

In 875 Ibn Firnas designed a pretty good glider by using the ideaof a birds wings. His big mistake was not realising that birds usetheir tails to help them y.

You can make your own mini glider - and see how much better ities with a tail just follow these instructions!

Step 1Start with a plain sheet of A4 paper.

Step 2Fold the paper in half, lengthways, down themiddle. (Make sure that every time you fold thepaper, you press down hard along the edge tomake a strong fold.)

Step 3Unfold the paper and use the crease down

the middle as a guideline.


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Step 4Fold the top corners of the paper in towards

that middle crease.

Step 5Starting from the newly made slants, foldthe edges in towards the middle again.

Step 6Fold the sheet of paper in half along the

original crease.

Step 7Fold down each ap from the open end to theclosed end. The paper should then look like along, thin triangle.

Step 8Lift up the aps to make your planes wings.

Your plane can now y! See how far it getswithout a tail, and then move on to Step 9.

Step 9With a pair of scissors, make a slit about 3cm from

the black edge of the plane (the bit hanging belowthe wings).

Step 10Take the little ap youve just created and invert

it by pushing it up this is your planes tail.

You can try making tails with different heightsand angles because these will change how your

plane ies.

To make it even better, you can add wing apswhich will give your plane more lift follow Steps

11 and 12 to make these.


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Step 11With the scissors, make a small slit about aquarter of the way in from the outside of oneof the wings. Make another small slit about aquarter of the way in from the inside of the wing.

Step 12Take the little ap youve created and fold it up.

Step 13Repeat Steps 11 and 12 on the other wing.

Now your plane should be able to travel reallyfar try experimenting with other ways offolding the paper to make even better designs!

If you like learning how to make super stinky stink bombs, or ifyou like practising your spying techniques, then Al Kindi is yourguy.

Al-Kindi came from a pretty important family he was the son ofthe governor of Kufa, in Iraq. He studied at home for a while butthen went to live in Baghdad to study at the awesome House ofWisdom.

He was highly respected and a number of the Abbasid caliphsemployed him to lead the translations of ancient Greek writing.He was even asked to tutor the son of Caliph al-Mutassim.

He wrote over 361 works on loads of different subjects phew!He also helped to introduce the Indian way of writing numbers tothe Islamic and Christian worlds. This is how we got our currentway of writing numbers - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.


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You Smelt it? He Dealt it.

Today nearly everyone wears a perfume. In fact, the only way toescape wearing a type of perfume would be to never ever take abath or wash your hair, and to never wash your clothes. But thenyour own natural stinky human smell would start to take over andthis might not be too great for your social life

Our shampoos, deodorants, air fresheners, toothpastes andwashing powders all contain perfumes to make them, and us,smell nicer.

The man to thank for all these pongy perfumes is Al-Kindi. Hewrote a book called the Book of the Chemistry of Perfumeand Distillations. Inside there were 107 methods and recipesfor perfume making, and even a description of the equipmentneeded. Sometimes he just mixed up lots of nice smelling plantsand spices, and sometimes he made liquid perfumes using

distillation.

Distillation is a process that can be used to separate a pure liquidfrom a mixture of liquids. It works when the liquids have differentboiling points meaning that they start to boil at differenttemperatures. Distillation is often used to separate ethanol (thealcohol in alcoholic drinks) from water.

On the next page is a diagram showing the distillation process toseparate ethanol from water.

The water and ethanol mixture is heated in a ask. Ethanol has alower boiling point than water so it evaporates rst. The ethanol

vapour is then cooled and condensed inside the condenser toform a pure liquid.

This is the sequence of events in distillation:

Heating - Evaporating - Cooling - Condensing

When Al-Kindi used distillation to produce ethanol he paved theway for loads of other inventions. Thanks to his discovery, we arenow able to make things like ink, cement and imitation pearls.

Distillation was also used to make rose water the liquidcollected from distilling rose petals. It smelt lovely and they alsoused it in cooking! I wonder what rose avoured gravy wouldtaste like Probably best not to eat your mums roses to nd out.


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Getting on with the Greeks

Al-Kindi spent a lot of his time translating books that all theclever Greeks had written centuries before. He was interested bywhat two Greeks called Aristotle and Euclid thought about howwe see things. They both had slightly different ideas, and he wasthe rst scientist to question their theories. His work helped alater scientist, Ibn al-Haytham, to come up with better theories.

Making Music

Al-Kindi was pretty keen on music. He published fteen pieces ofwork on music theory and developed musical instruments.

He was one of the main musicians at the time to use musicalnotation the system of writing music. Al-Kindi used a systembased on the alphabet. This is what the system we use todaylooks like.

He and his fellow musicians also named the notes of a musicalscale with syllables instead of letters, called solmization. The scalewent like this:

And our modern musical scale goes like this:

Pretty similar, huh?


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Al-Kindi was also one of the rst to realize that music can helppeople feel better. He experimented by playing music to peoplethat were ill. Today music therapy is often used to help peoplewith physical, emotional and mental conditions.

It can work to make you feel happier too. Have you noticed thatlistening to bouncy, upbeat music makes you feel good? Justbe careful listening to the Indiana Jones theme song doesntnecessarily mean youll be able to outrun boulders or jump frommoving trains.

Code-breaking

If you need tocommunicate topsecret information,the main thing to dois make sure that it

doesnt fall into enemyhands. For thousandsof years societies havehad to think up ways toget round this problem.One way to hide yourinformation fromenemies is to write it ina new secret language a code.

The Greeks cameup with a scytale in6th century BC. Thescytale was a stickwith an exact width.They wrapped a long piece of paper round it and wrote on ithorizontally. Then they unwrapped the paper and sent it to their

friends in a different camp. The friend could only read it if theyhad a scytale of exactly the same width to wrap the paper around.If the stick was wider or narrower, the message could not be read.

What an Enigma!

In World War II things got a lot more advanced. The Germansinvented the Enigma machine, which was like a typewriter butwould change the letters that were typed into a different code.

The Germans transmitted their coded military messages over theradio. Only another German with an Enigma machine would beable to understand them. The code that decided how the letterswould be changed would change every day, making the Enigmamachine almost impossible to crack.

This was an excellent system until some clever British and Polishcode breakers managed to crack the codes.

Al-Kindi was another excellent code cracker. He wrote a bookcalled A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages.Part of this book used frequency analysis to break codes.Frequency Analysis sounds really complicated, but all it means isnoticing the number of times you spot the same letter or symbolin a message.

Al-Kindi noticed that if a normal letter was replaced with adifferent letter or symbol, the new letter would still act like the

original one. If we replaced all the es in a sentence with thesymbol n we could still read it

Do you snn? It is quitn nasy to rnad this snntnncn!

Its a good idea to guess the letter e rst in a game of hangman its quite likely to be in the word youre trying to guess. This isbecause in the English language the letter e is used most often


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in our sentences. 13% of all the letters that we speak or write arethe letter e. So if e was replaced by n then n would be usedmost often. 13% of all letters would be n. A code breaker thenworks out that n represents e.

See if you can crack this code to nd out two of Al-Kindis moreunusual talents! 4 letters has been replaced by symbols. Thesymbolsn, t,m ando each stand for a letter. Work out whichletter each symbol stands for and read the hidden message

Heres a clue

E is the most frequent letterO is the second most frequent letterD is the third most frequent letterW is the fourth most frequent letter

Work out which letter each symbol stands for and read the

hidden message...

Al-Kinmioas a clnvnr fnllto. Hn liknm tt makn sotrmsanm hnoas a vnry gttm cttk.

(Answertocode:Al-Kindiwasaverycleverfellow.Helikedtomakeswordsandhewasaverygoodcook.)

Also sometimes called the rst scientist, Ibn al-Haytham isregarded as the father of modern optics, the study of howlight works. He scientically explained much of what we knowtoday about optics including how light travels, how we see, howrainbows happen, and how the earths atmosphere creates anoptical illusion.

The Greatest Discovery Ever?

When Ibn al-Haytham was young, the ruler of the land, called the

caliph, commanded him to nd a way to control the oods of theriver Nile. Ibn al-Haytham realised that the Ancient Egyptians hadalready tried this and failed. He knew that if they couldnt do it,neither could he. He needed to escape from the caliphs orders.Disobeying the caliph was a sure way to end up dead, so hecame up with great idea and pretended he had gone mad! Theruler couldnt kill him because it would have been an unfairpunishment to kill someone just because theyd gone crazy,


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but a madman obviously wasnt any use to the ruler either. Thecaliph decided to get him out of the way by putting him underhouse arrest. Safely in his house, Ibn al-Haytham was free to doanything he wanted without any fear of interruption. Genius!

So next time you need to get out of chores or homework, whynot fake a bit of madness? No one can get angry at you and thecrazier you act with your new free time, the more theyll believe

you!

Creating the Camera

While under house arrest Ibn al-Haytham spent loads of timelooking at the rays of light that came through holes in his windowshutters. He realised that light must travel in a straight line. Hesaw that when light reected off an object outside his roomit passed through the small hole in his window shutters andreformed as an upside-down image on the wall opposite thehole.

This happens because the tiny hole only allows one light rayfrom each point on the object outside the box to get inside. Animage is created inside the dark room that has exactly the sameproportions as the object outside it. He realised that the smallerthe hole, the clearer the picture.This happens because the tiny hole only allows one light rayfrom each point on the object outside the box to get inside. Animage is created inside the dark room that has exactly the same

proportions as the object outside it. He realised that the smallerthe hole, the clearer the picture.

Ibn al-Haytham proved his theories by inventing the rst type ofcamera. He created dark rooms with a pinhole in one side and awhite sheet on the other and called this set up the qamara. This isbasically what happens inside a modern camera today.

You can do this yourself, even on a small scale. All you need isa dark room or container with a tiny hole in one side and a atwhite surface on the other if the objects outside are brightenough, an upside-down image of them will appear on the whitesurface inside!


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The Book of Optics

Ibn al-Haytham included this, and many other discoveries, in onehuge book called the Book of Optics, which is considered hisgreatest work.In his book, Ibn al-Haytham was the rst person to totally rejectthe Greeks theories about light. Early Greeks thought that we seeby sending rays out of our eyes that are cut off by objects in our

vision. Later Greeks like Aristotle and Galen thought that we seebecause something enters our eye that represents an object, butthey never backed this up with experiments.

Ibn al-Haytham was the rst to prove that we see because lightreects off an object and enters our eyes. He also said thatbecause the image would be upside down when it rst enteredour eye, we must have a connection between our eyes and ourbrain to turn the image up the right way for us. We now knowthat the optic nerve carries information from the eye to the brain,

which turns it the right way round.

The Book of Optics was translated from Arabic into Latin in 1270and helped scientists in the West to think up great inventionslike the telescope, the modern camera, the microscope, and evennew ways of drawing in Renaissance art. Great Western thinkerslike Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, Descartes and Johan Keplerwere all inuenced by his work. (You can read more about thesemen in the back of the book).

The Scientic Method

One of the main reasons Ibn al-Haytham found out so muchuseful stuff was his revolutionary method for working out histheories.

Most ways of thinking before Ibn al-Haytham had come from theAncient Greeks. The Greeks believed that by arguing and

reasoning about ideas, they could discover which idea wascorrect. They didnt think experiments were very important.

Ibn al-Haytham decided that experiments were essential forproving what is true and what isnt. This was such a good ideathat all scientists use it today nothing is believed until anexperiment proves that it works. This is called the scienticmethod. Of course it makes a lot of sense how can you be sure

whether an idea works without trying it out in practice?!

The scientic method is considered to be so fundamental tomodern science that some scientists say Ibn al-Haytham was theworlds rst scientist.

The Inuence of Music on Animals

Another amazing discovery of Ibn al-Haytham was the effects ofmusic on animals. He demonstrated that a camel could be madeto walk faster or slower depending on the music you played to it- just think what you could do today with a quality sound system!Now many studies show that music can affect the mood ofanimals and humans. Try it yourself does music with a strong,fast beat make you want to go to sleep or to get up and dance?


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Try It Yourself!

Ibn al-Haytham created his camera obscura by making a tinyhole in dark room. This let a small amount of light through andcreated an image on the far wall.

You dont need a whole room to make a camera obscura youcan make your own miniature one! Check out the things you

need, which are listed below, and then follow the steps for amiraculous demonstration of how light works.

You Will Need:

A cardboard box or tube (size doesnt really matter, but the imagewill be clearer if the diameter is larger than about 6cm)

A piece of translucent (slightly see-through) paper - tracingpaper, greaseproof paper, or tissue paper will do.

Sticky tape

A pair of scissors

A compass or something to make a small hole with

Step 1Tape up the box or tube so that it cannotopen and so no light can get in.

Step 2Use the scissors to

cut away one of thesmaller sides of thebox or tube get a

handy adult to do this bit.

Step 3Tape your piece of translucent paper overthe side youve just cut away. Try to keepit as at as possible because this is whereyoull see the image.

Step 4On the side

opposite thescreen, make a

small hole about3mm wide.

Your camera obscura is ready! The sidewith the small hole lets the light in, andthe side with the translucent paper is theviewing screen.

Step 5Point the side with the small hole in it towards a bright light,and keep the side with viewing screen in the dark. You can dothis either by standing in a dark room indoors and pointing thecamera obscura at a bright window. Or to make it darker aroundthe viewing screen, hold it close to your face and keep a coat ordark material over your head while you look at it. (This is howthey used to take photos using old-fashioned Pinhole cameras).

You should be able to see an inverted (upside down) image of

whatever your camera obscura is pointed at. If you widen thehole in the front, the image on your viewing screen will lookbrighter, but less sharp.

People also use camera obscuras to watch eclipses of the sun.Because the camera obscura lets in much less light than the sungives out, there is no risk of the suns light damaging your eyeswhen you watch it through the viewing screen.


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Try your hand at these Tricky Questions!

1. Today 1.6 billion cups of coffee are drunk worldwide every day. But when and

how was coffee first discovered?

(a) By some frisky Ethiopian goats in 10th century

(b) By some Egyptian academics in the 16th century

(c) By a Viennese monk in the 17th century

2. The word mafia, tabby and ghoul come from Arabic words true or false?

3. What kind of poo did the medieval Muslims believe was the best fertilizer for

their crops?

(a) Horse poo

(b) Pigeon poo

(c) Camel poo

4. A bag of coins is quite heavy, and Arab merchants travelled huge distances

for their trade. What cunning invention allowed them to transfer large amounts of

money over great distances?

(a) They invented the credit card

(b) They invented the cheque

(c) They trained huge eagles to fly between banks with bags of gold tied to their

feet

5. Caravans were huge processions of people travelling together with their goodsand animals, covering enormous distances for either pilgrimage or trade. Which of

these would you NOT be able to find in a caravan?

(a) A mosque

(b) A market

(c) A kitchen with ovens

Answers

1. (a) In the 900s a few naughty goats started eating some berries theyd found

while grazing. The man looking after them noticed that when they ate the berriesthe goats got more jumpy and excited. News spread and people started boiling

the berries to create coffee, which they called

al-qahwa, to help them stay awake.

A Viennese monk (choice (c)) was

involved in the history of coffee though

in 1683 Marco dAviano, a Capuchin

monk, was fighting the Turks who were

besieging Vienna. When the Turks retreated the Viennese made coffee

from abandoned sacks of Turkish coffee, but they found the coffee

too strong for their taste so they mixed it with cream and honey. This made

the coffee turn the same kind of colour brown as theCapuchin monks clothes so they named their new

style of coffee after him and created cappuccino!

2. True Mafia comes from an Arabic word mahiyah

meaning boastful or flashy. In Sicily an unusually

ornate or demonstrative cockerel is described as

mafioso.

Tabby meant silk cloth with a

striped pattern which came

from the Arabic attabi. By1695 the phrase had come to refer to a striped cat.

Ghoul comes from the Arabic ghul,

meaning demon.


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3. (b) Pigeon poo was used to help crops grow, especially in Iran. They built

huge 20 meter high towers for their precious poopers to live in so that the birddroppings would collect inside. Once a year they cleaned them out and spread

the muck all over the fields what a job!

Apparently at one time there were 3000

pigeon towers outside Isfahan in Iran,

collecting the manure from

thousands and thousands of pigeons.

What a stink!

Maybe we should learn a lesson and

start using pigeon poo as our organic fertilizer with all the pigeons living

in London today, we could turn Trafalgar Square into one big pigeon poo

collector!

4. (b) The word Cheque comes from the Arabic word saqq, which was a

promise written on paper to pay money to the papers owner when they

reached a bank. In the 9th century an Arab businessman could cash a cheque

in Canton, China, using money coming from his bank account in Baghdad,

thousands of miles away.

5. Sorry trick question! You could find all these things if you travelled with a

caravan. Ibn Battuta, a 14th century traveller, described the Sultans caravan

as a vast city on the move with its inhabitants, its mosques and bazaars in

it, the smoke of its kitchens rising in the air (for they cook on the march), and

horse drawn wagons transporting the people.

Whats with the Names?

A lot of the people in this book have the same bits in their namelike Ibn. Some also have really long names. This may seem oddbut it actually makes a lot of sense.

Arab names tell you loads more information about someonesfamily.

A lot of names include the word Ibn.

Ibn means son of. So the name Abbas Ibn Firnas means that thisis a man called Abbas who is the son of a man called Firnas.

So everyone, even though they have their own name, can also benamed by how they t into their family. If you meet a boy calledDan and his dad is called Paul, then Dan could be called Dan IbnPaul. And the list can go on and on. If Dans grandfather was

called Bob and his great-grandfather was called Edgar and hisgreat great-grandfather was called Gerald then Dan could also becalled

Dan Ibn Paul Ibn Bob Ibn Edgar Ibn Gerald

But that might take up a bit too much space on his homework.

Why not ask your mum or dad about the names of yourancestors and see how long you can make your Arab name?

Documents

Bright Minds, Muslim Inventors- School Book for Young Children