Can you beat them?
The Islamic Golden Age Quiz
Ten questions on the centuries when scholars from Spain to Central Asia, writing in Arabic, made the Islamic world a leader in science, medicine and philosophy.
- 10 questions
- About 3 minutes
- Medium
- Includes a map and a photo
About this quiz
Historians usually date the Islamic Golden Age from the 700s to the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, although science kept flourishing long after that in Cairo, Samarkand and Istanbul. Scholars writing in Arabic, among them Arabs, Persians, Christians and Jews, translated Greek, Persian and Indian works and added discoveries of their own in mathematics, medicine, optics and astronomy.
The quiz covers science and medicine, star names, English words borrowed from Arabic, and the diplomacy between Baghdad and Charlemagne. Expect to learn something even from the answers you get right.
Topics in this quiz
Read up first
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Encyclopedia
Al-Khwarizmi
Al-Khwarizmi was a Baghdad mathematician whose book gave algebra its name and whose own name became the word algorithm.
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Encyclopedia
Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
Avicenna was a Persian physician and philosopher whose Canon of Medicine was used as a textbook in Europe and the Islamic world for centuries.
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Encyclopedia
Silk Road
The Silk Road was a network of overland trade routes that connected China to the Mediterranean for over 1,500 years.
