Abbas ibn Firnas

Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbbās ibn Firnās ibn Wardās al-Tākurunnī (; c. 809/810 – 887 CE), known as ʿAbbās ibn Firnās () was an Andalusi polymath:"Ibn Firnas ('Abbâs)" by Ahmed Djebbar, Dictionnaire culturel des science, by Collective under the direction of Nicolas Witkowski, Du Regard Editions, 2003, .Lynn Townsend White, Jr. (Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture 2 (2), p. 97-111 : "Ibn Firnas was a polymath: a physician, a rather bad poet, the first to make glass from stones (quartz), a student of music, and inventor of some sort of metronome." an inventor, astronomer, physician, chemist, engineer, musician, and poet. He was reported to have experimented with unpowered flight.How Invention Begins: Echoes of Old Voices in the Rise of New Machines By John H. LienhardLynn Townsend White, Jr. (Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture 2 (2), p. 97-111 [100f.]

Ibn Firnas made various contributions in the field of astronomy and engineering. He constructed a device which indicated the motion of the planets and stars in the Universe. In addition, Ibn Firnas came up with a procedure to manufacture colourless glass and made magnifying lenses for reading, which were known as reading stones.

Early life Scholarly consensus indicates that ibn Firnas (full name: ) was: born in Ronda, Takurunna province; he lived in Córdoba, and, was an Umayyad (client) of Berber descent. His lineage may have been linked to the early Muslim conquests of the Iberian Peninsula.Nicolas Witkowski (dir.) et al., Paris, Editions du Regard; Éditions du Seuil, 2001, 441 p. Later accounts emphasizing Arabic contributions to science may identify Abbas ibn Firnas in the broader frame of Islamic cultural heritage or as a muladí.

Work Abbas ibn Firnas devised a means of manufacturing colourless glass. He invented various glass planispheres, and he made corrective lenses ("reading stones"). Abbas bin Firnas also devised an apparatus consisting of a chain of objects that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars, and he developed a process for cutting rock crystal that enabled Al-Andalus to cease exporting quartz to Egypt to be cut. He introduced the Sindhind to Al-Andalus, which had important influence on astronomy in Europe. He also designed the al-Maqata, a water clock,Marshall Cavendish Reference. Illustrated Dictionary of the Jewish World. Marshall Cavendish, 2010 p.106. and a prototype for a kind of metronome.

Aviation Some seven centuries after the death of Firnas, the Algerian historian Ahmad al-Maqqari (d. 1632) wrote a description of Ibn Firnas that included the following:Lynn Townsend White, Jr. (Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture 2 (2), p. 97-111

Al-Maqqari is said to have used in his history works "many early sources no longer extant", but in the case of Ibn Firnas, he does not cite his sources for the details of the reputed flight, though he does claim that one verse in a ninth-century Arab poem is actually an allusion to Ibn Firnas's flight. The poem was written by court poet Mu'min ibn Saïd, under Muhammad I (emir of the Emirate of Córdoba, d. 886), who was acquainted with (and usually critical) of Ibn Firnas. The pertinent verse runs: "He flew faster than the phoenix in his flight when he dressed his body in the feathers of a vulture." No other surviving sources refer to the event.Lynn Townsend White, Jr. (Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture 2 (2), p. 97-111 : "The Moroccan historian al-Maqqari, who died in 1633 CE but who used many early sources no longer extant, tells of a certain Abu'l Qasim 'Abbas b. Firnas who lived in Cordoba in the later ninth century. [...] No modern historian can be satisfied with a source written 750 years after the event, and it is astonishing that, if indeed several eye-witnesses recorded Firnas's flight, no mention of it independent of al-Maqqari has survived. Yet al-Maqqari cites a contemporary poem by Mu'min b. Said, a minor court poet of Cordoba under Muhammad I (d. 886 CE), which appears to refer to this flight and which has the greater evidential value because Mu'min did not like b. Firnas: he criticized one of his metaphors and disapproved his artificial thunder. [...] Although the evidence is slender, we must conclude that b. Firnas was the first man to fly successfully, and that he has priority over Eilmer for this honor. But it is not necessary to assume that Eilmer needed foreign stimulus to build his wings. Anglo-Saxon England in his time provided an atmosphere conducive to originality, perhaps particularly in technology."

It has been suggested that Ibn Firnas's attempt at glider flight might have inspired the attempt by Eilmer of Malmesbury between 1000 and 1010 in England; however, there exists no recorded evidence to support this hypothesis.

Armen Firman According to limited secondary sources, approximately 20 years before Ibn Firnas attempted to fly he witnessed a man named 'Armen Firman' wrap himself in a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts and jump from a tower in Córdoba, intending to use the garment as wings on which he could glide. The alleged attempt at flight was unsuccessful, and the garment slowed his fall enough that he sustained only minor injuries.

However, secondary sources that deal exhaustively with Ibn Firnas's flight attempt make zero references to 'Armen Firman'.Terias, Elias, "Sobre el vuelo de Abbas Ibn Firnas", Al-Andalus, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1964), p. 365–369Lévi-Provençal, E. "ʿAbbās b. Firnās b. Wardūs, Abu 'l-Ḳāsim." Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs, 2009 Al-Maqqari's account of Ibn Firnas – the sole primary source of the flight story – makes no mention of 'Firman'. Because 'Firman's' jump is said to have been Ibn Firnas's source of inspiration, the lack of any mention of 'Firman' in Al-Maqqari's account may point to synthesis — the tower jump later confused with Ibn Firnas's gliding attempt in secondary writings.

It is likely that 'Armen Firman' is, in fact, the Latinized name of Abbas ibn Firnas.

Legacy In 1973, a statue of Ibn Firnas by the sculptor Badri al-Samarrai was installed at the Baghdad International Airport, in Iraq. In 1976, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved the naming of a crater on the moon after Ibn Firas: the lunar impact crater, Ibn Firnas. In Córdoba, the Abbas ibn Firnás Bridge was named in his honour (the bridge's construction was completed in 2011). Firnas Airways, a British one-plane airline, was also named after him.

Abbas ibn Firnas

Bron en licentie