History of water Engineering

 

The Islamic respect for water and the ingenuity of Muslim engineers enabled Islamic society to flourish in desert and semi desert regions .

At the height of the golden age of Islamic science during the 10th century over 500000 people lived in the largest Muslim cities while only 10000 people lived in the largest western cities at that time .

Muslim engineers studied and built on the water technologies of the Phoenicians Romans Greeks and Egyptians .

The used an Egyptian device called the nilo meter to accurately measure the height of the Nile and adopted the principles of Persian water systems in one of their most impressive engineering feats .that (cannot) system the cannot was a sophisticated underground water supply system punctuated at close intervals 

On the surface by wells. It’s carefully calculated connection and inclinations ensured the effective flow and ongoing supply of water to entire cities 

Keeping water underground also meant that evaporation was minimized in the harsh desert environment.another water engineering device that Muslim engineers improved was the nori a wheel 

This giant water wheel scooped up water from the river and poured it into a water supply system for agricultural and domestic use as as for fountains drinking crops and public bathhouses .nuria’s also turned giant grinding machines and water pumps .water was also essential to service the Islamic emphasis on cleanliness health and hygiene public baths played important role in this regard in larger cities.

The Hmong’s incorporated beautiful fountains decorative pools saunas and steam baths .in regions where rainfall was minimal .

It was essential to store water for use over long periods of time to achieve this 

Muslim engineers used sophisticated land surveying methods and instruments to build long lasting dams and reservoirs 

Eight dams built in 10th century along the Turin river in Spain still meet the irrigation needs of Valencia ten centuries later and a third of all dams built by Islamic engineers still stand today 

The man responsible for these engineering marvel’s were some of the greatest minds of their time and their contributions to engineering and society continue to be of benefit today .

The three (banu musa) brothers abu jafar ,Muhammad Ahmed and al Hassan were respected scholars from Baghdad’s famous house of wisdom in 9th century.

They wrote many influential books on mathematics geometry and engineering.

They were also great fountain makers and designed fountain that continuesly changed their shape by employing devices such as worm gears and a cleaver hollow navel valve  .

The use of a worm gear and wheel to transmit motion from flowing water to a revolving pipe was the major technological advance in control systems engineering.

That was later used in automatic machines during the industrial revolution 

(Al-jazare) born in 12th centuryTurkey was an exceptional engineer who created many all inspiring automatic machines .

Which he documented in the book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices

One of these machines was a revolutionary pumped system used to lift water for irrigation and drinking .

Al-jazare’s pump employed cogwheels copper pistons suction and delivery pipes a crankshaft and one way clock valves and was able to lift water to a height of 12 meters into supply system .

The pistons were driven by a water wheel using cogs and a crankshaft to convert the circular motion of the wheel into the linear motion required to make the pistons function .the pistons sucked water up into an outlet pipe and pumped it out into the supply system 

Another fascinating invention of al-jazare was the woo-do machines 

woo-do is the ritual of washing oneself before prayer .

Al-jazare designed a mobile woo-do machine .that could be brought before guests .it looked like a peacock on tray and would give of eight short spurts of water to allow guests to wash themselves.

Taqi al-din born in 16th century turkey was a great polymath and was hailed by his contemporaries in Ottoman Empire as one of the greatest scientists of all time .he wrote many books and invented a revolutionary six cylinder water pump called a mono-block pump .the six cylinder pump had a camshaft attached to a water wheel.the rotating wheel drove the camshaft which in turn pushed a set Connecting rods .

These connecting rods pivoted at the center and the downward movement at the one end lifted up pistons with a lead weight on the other end .

After the camshaft had completed .its cycle the piston was forced down again by its led weight .

This motion forced water up the delivery pipe and into a water supply system 

These great Muslim engineers were some of the many contributors to the magnificent water supply system dams and canals that still function today to the innovative water powered machines that were the precursors to the machines .that spurred the industrial revolution in the west and to the awesome inventions that inspired scientists and engineers for centuries to follow

Read More

Yusuf Estes special opinion (3)

I said what kind of music did they have he said they don’t have any Muslim what do you worship god with no music he said no music 

In fact when I thing about Jesus what was his character like how did he act how did he treat people and I said to myself this man this Muslim is acting more like Jesus then the Christians he never drunks alcohol he never smoked cigarettes

 he never lies he never cheats he doesn’t chase the woman in fact when ladies come close he puts his eyes down I said if Jesus was here this is what he would do it would be like this man I still wondered how can I get him to be a Christian but all along I was wishing I could be more like this man 

Finally one day he said to me I will go to your religion if your religion is better than my religion but you need proof 

In Christianity religion is not about proof it’s about faith no about proof 

He said in Islam we have both we have faith we have proof when he said that it come in my and I said to him do you mean to sit there and tell me as Muslim and prove there’s god then he said to me do you mean to sit there as a preacher for Christians and you can’t now what could I say because I want to know what’s his proof

 

In Islam every single word you must be able to prove or don’t say it 

One night when I was really thinking about Islam so much I found that the catholic priest accepted Islam so I couldn’t believe it I started to tell my wife then I found that she also is interested to be a Muslim I’m shocked so I want talk to him again one more time so we were walking around in the night outside our house

I asked him about my business,family,the people I know congregation I used to go with the Bible the Quran many questions I don’t know what to do I wanted him to tell me why didn’t you be a Muslim but look at wisdom he said this is not about you and me and your wife,father,congregation of your people if this is about you and him so you need to talked to him ,look at this man he’s crying oh Allah guide

them but he didn’t say I want you to be guided by me no he let Allah do what Allah does and he cried for us he went and prayed and while he was praying I went and put my head on the ground and I said god if you’re there guide me and when I raised up my head I knew there really is god he is one and I knew Muhammad  is last and final massager of Allah

Read More

Yusuf Estes special opinion (2)

still in Arabic the way it came it’s perfect nothing missing no words are missing no pages are missing not even a dot so then we had another idea let’s talk to him about god but when we star to talk about god he said can you explain trinity well we try to explain how three could be one will get many examples but none of them really hold up very good do you know that when we asked him what do you guys say about god? he said well it’s pretty simple and he said allah said in Quran Sarah ekhlas  allah is one  and have no sons no daughter and he is not like anything .

Many people ask me how did you feel about being a Christian what was it like to be a Christian did you ever have any doubt about Christianity ?well actually at one point in my life I was so involved in Christianity believing in it that I thought it was everything until I began to find mistakes in bible serious mistakes in bible then it made me begin to doubt not doubt about god know but to doubt about the Bible and what about Christianity some of the things that we think about when we talk about this subject is why is it called Christianity beacause if it’s called Christianity 

it means you have to follow Jesus Christ but what about all the people before that they couldn’t have known about him because he he wasn’t here what about Adam Abraham Moses David suleiman all the prophets and what about Jesus himself did he say I’m a Christian actually I found in the Bible it says that that they were never called Christians until they took their message to Antioch long after Jesus was gone long after Paul came in to the religion and started changing things even 

then he said we were never called Christians until after Antioch then I started thinking if the name is not right the book has some mistakes I don’t know but when I looked at other options other religions I wasn’t very impressed that really wasn’t and I had not really heard anything about Islam and I never met any Muslims not until my Egyptian friend but I began to observe some things that really made me see a beautiful connection one of the things

 that my Egyptian friend told me is that we Muslim believe in Jesus I said what because I know Jewish not believe in Jesus but believe in Adam Abraham ... and he said he did miracles and he could speak when he was born and he was a prophet and I said what you believe about Jesus we say son of god what do you say  he said we say son of Mary that makes sense he is the son of Mary he said this way we don’t have to try to resolve the issue of son of god 

Muslim do believe so much almost you know  almost exactly but maybe a little bit different because when we come the subject of son of god he said no so son of Mary yes .

When Allah wants anything he just says be and it is and that’s how he created Jesus and I thought oh it’s in the Bible 

We believe he’s not dead he’s with Allah and he will come in the last day

oh my god so this man is going to be easy  I can convert him right now this is almost same thing but then it happened the big event .the catholic priest friend of mine said I want to go to the mosque I want to see what did they do and he went to the mosque when he come back we said come here what are they doing there do they like you know slaughter animals and do they make bombs he said no they line up and pray in silent 

Read More

Yusuf Estes special opinion (1)

My name is Yusuf Estes and originally I am from Texas I live now in Washington DC area and I came to Islam 20 years ago because of something special . before I came to Islam I used to call people to Christianity everywhere I went . I would be carrying my bible with me I would have my Salib or cross and I even had a cap or hat it said Jesus you is lord do you know.

 I didn’t realize then how funny I must have looked I didn’t realize it but in those days I was very passionate about communicating the massage that I felt people needed to know the massage about love  a massage about peace and message about being a good person so the daily life that I had before coming to Islam was filled with two things working hard to make business make money to Jarrett and working hard to tell people about Jesus and the message of peace 

it surprised me to find out that in Islam I could work more and communicate more that’s for sure before met the person that helped me to know more about Islam I used to have a very bad picture about Islam and Muslims in fact I was so afraid to even need a Muslim that when my father told me we’d be doing business with a Muslim I said no no way these guys Muslims they are terrorists they are hijackers 

they are are kidnappers and they don’t believe In god in fact they worshiping a black box in the desert and they kissed they ground five times a day that was they way I understood Islam a very bad opinion and a bad idea of how they treated women and how they treated children I thought that really it was almost like they want to put everybody in prison this was idea that I had but then I had never really met a Muslim until we started doing business with a man from Egypt when I first met this Egyptian gentleman I was surprised because

 I was expecting to see some man wearing a long dress and a black robe over it and the big turbine on his head and has one eyebrow goes all they way across this maybe carrying sword but when I met this man I was so surprised he was wearing normal clothes and he look as normal as anybody he did it even have a big beard in fact and didn’t have any hair he was nice really nice person and

 I thought right away hey I bet I can convert him to become a Christian that was my idea I’ll make him become a Christian but allah had other plans one of the things that really amazed me this man was very quiet gentle kind what’s amazing was was the way that he every day he would the five times pray on time he would say excuse me i I’ll be right back he would go and make wodo then pray and start working again every day except one day a week on Friday he stops everything 

he said I will be back in two hours he would get ready and drive to the masjid do his pray and come back and it took almost a half hours just to get there so that’s why he had to take two hours off but he would still come back and go right back to work again so the man would to work seven days a week but he would stop for his worship another thing that he did he liked to fast some on Mondays and also on 

Thursday  and you would go to me say would you like this who want some of their so and so he’d say no  it’s ok I am fasting one amazing thing about him that even my father talked about was how honest he was in in business any time there was any business transaction whatsoever he always made sure the costumer got full value for whatever it was they were doing and to be sure 

that they got product that they were promised and then the follow up to be sure that they were happy that was another thing that we really were a amazed about you know I thought if we make this man a Christian we could make him a saint maybe even an angel because he’s so sweet so nice but do you know what happened one day while I was trying to convert him he ask us about the Bible and so I said yes 

I have a catholic priest who will come to my house I was Protestant this is two   Different religions and my father would be there with his bible so I have my bible my father has a different bible the catholic has another bible and will sit there and try to talk about all this but then we begin saying which bible which bible you know between us all the time the Muslim he’s sitting there quiet so we asked him well how many versions you know of that Quran do you have still one 

Read More