Youth Lens on the Silk Roads

Youth Lens on the Silk Roads

The sciences of alchemy, chemistry and medicine originated in China, Egypt, and India, but all underwent important developments in Islamic Asian countries and in Tibet and Mongolia throughout the Middle Ages.  Natural deposits of metals in Central Asia encouraged alchemy and experimentation with metallurgic materials, as witnessed by the large number of Arabic treatises dealing with science. 

The early Islamic Caliphate inherited a variety of cultural and scientific traditions, as it incorporated ancient centers of learning and civilization such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Iran. In turn, the Abbasid caliphs greatly cultivated the arts and sciences, and Baghdad became a famous intellectual center. Works were translated from Greek and Persian and great advances were made in the study sciences, especially arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry.