More important than the splendid literary and artistic achievements of the Abbasid period were developments in science and mathematics. Baghdad was close to one of the great Nestorian (Christian) centers where Aristotelian reasoning and Greek learning had continued to thrive. Under Caliph al-Mansur (754-775), Arabic translations of Greek works were undertaken. The result was a thriving science. One should mention chemistry and astronomical and astrological studies as areas of tremendous advance at Baghdad and other Abbasid centers of learning. So dynamic was its scientific impulse, that even after the decline and collapse of Arabic political control, Moslem civilization continued to produce great works.

The medical and philsophical achievements of the Abbasid period were put together by Ibn Sina, or Avicenna (980-1037), at the very end of our period. Ibn Sina's most significant contribution came in the area of medicine; his Qanun fi'l - Tibb, translated as the Canon of Medicine [in Latin, by Gerard of Cremona (a. 1150-1170)]. Avicenna's Canon represented the standard Galenic text on medicine down to the time of Harvey. It showed the influence of Aristotle, Plotinus, Hippocrates, Al-Razi, and al-Farabi. Avicenna was important to the development of Latin scholasticism, because unlike some Moslem scientists, he combined science and religion.

Important as these contributions to science were, one must not forget that the greatest Arabic contributions to our modern scientific reasoning lay in the sphere of mathematics. Everybody knows that it was the Arabic world that gave its numbering system to the modern world. Though they borrowed much from India, Greece, and China, the Arabs refined and adopted it. Baghdad scholars even laid the foundations for modern algebra. Algebra was later named for a ninth-century mathematician and astronomer at Baghdad named Abu Jafar Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi. He wrote a book named Hisab al-jabr w'al muqabalah. Hisab al-jabr dealt with mathematical reductions and comparisons and was translated into the Latin language in the twelfth century; hence, algebra. The Arabic numbering system included the concepts of place values and the number 0. It allowed the replacement of counting boards with, as the Europeans later put it, the new "pen reckoning." Robert of Chester translated this book in the twelfth century. It was ibn-Musa's book that introduced the "new numbers" into western Europe .

Baghdad developed a splendid courtly life under the Abbasids. The familiar tales of the Arabian Nights describe the adventures of the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid (766-809). The wine drinking and the search for other sensory joys found in this group of tales indicate how worldliness had crept into Islam. But the Arabian Nights also demonstrates the development of a sophisticated culture. The most significant achievements of this culture were a prosperous economy and flourishing science and mathematics.