Işık’s statements came as he addressed a group of businessmen in Konya on Friday night. Stating that the Islamic world had shaped the world in many aspects, he gave examples of leading Muslim discoveries. “Even 700 to 800 years before Galileo, 71 Muslim scientists led by al-Khwarizmi came together at the order of Caliph al-Ma’mun and revealed that the earth is round,” the minister said.
“While Europe was deep into the darkness of the Middle Ages, Islamic scholars created inventions that shaped the future of the world,” he said.
Although the minister implied that Galileo discovered the Earth was round, the issue is a matter of controversy among scientists who think the discovery dates back to before Aristotle. Galileo is known to have theorized that the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
The museum was founded by Fuat Sezgin, a Turkish professor emeritus on Arabic-Islamic science who was recently referred by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, too. During a speech on Nov. 18, Erdoğan quoted Sezgin’s theories for his controversial claim that the American continent was “discovered by Muslim sailors” some 300 years before Christopher Columbus.
The concept of a spherical Earth remained a matter of philosophical speculation until the 3rd century BC, when Hellenistic astronomy established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given.
Around 830 AD, Caliph Al-Ma’mun commissioned a group of Muslim astronomers and geographers to measure the distance from Tadmur (Palmyra) to Raqqah in modern Syria. They calculated the Earth’s circumference, reaching to numbers very close to the currently modern values.