Georges Ifrah December 10, 2007

“My Quest for Peerless Treasures Of the Arab-Islamic Science”

Author of The Universal History of Numbers, Mr. Georges Ifrah spent ten years on the question: Where do numbers come from? The former mathematics instructor’s efforts led to The Universal History of Numbers, listed by The American Scientist as one of “The One Hundred Books that Shaped a Century of Science”. Mr. Ifrah has turned his attention to Arab-Islamic scholarship in In Search of His Roots. For almost a decade, he has been working to collect the knowledge necessary in order to understand the Arab-Islamic role in the history of science.



Citing a multitude of evidence, the lecture will present a clear idea of the role of Arab-Islamic scholars in the Middle Ages. The importance of these scholars as the unquestionable forerunners of modern scientists, and why the Arabic science has paved the way for the great movement of the European Renaissance will also be discussed. With the support of audio-visual documentation selected from the more than 7,000 images of documents, manuscripts, paintings, miniatures, illuminations, engravings, and portraits of the main Arab-Persian scholars, the speaker will show how, after several years of hard and patient work, he finally collected, examined and created a unique collection of pictorial material on Arab-Islamic Science from museums, libraries and archive centres all over the world.

Official Website: http://www.darmuseum.org.kw/cultural_season_detail.php?lang=e&id=92