160 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



of study and indeed their attitude to learning may be described as 

 decidedly unmathematical. G. R. Kaye. 



HINDU ASTRONOMY. In astronomy a parallel development 

 took place. It seems probable that Greek planetary theory 

 was introduced into India between the times of Hipparchus and 

 Ptolemy, but Hindu astronomy is characterized as "a curious 

 mixture of old fantastic ideas and sober geometrical methods of 

 calculation." Aryabhata says indeed "The sphere of the stars 

 is stationary, and the earth, making a revolution, produces the 

 daily rising and setting of stars and planets," an opinion rejected 

 by the later Brahmagupta. 



MOHAMMED AND THE HEGIRA. During the sixth and following 

 centuries great events were happening in Arabia, an anciently 

 settled country, but up to that time a blank in the history of 

 civilization and of science. In 569 A.D. or thereabouts was born, 

 probably in Mecca, an insignificant commercial town 45 miles 

 from the middle eastern shore of the Red Sea, that extraordinary 

 man Mohammed, whom millions of his fellow men still regard as 

 the Prophet of the Almighty (Allah) . In 622 Mohammed fled with 

 a small company of his disciples to Medina, an agricultural town 

 250 miles to the north of Mecca, where he prosecuted his prop- 

 aganda, and completed his Koran, the Mohammedan Bible. 

 Here also he died in 632 A.D. 



In Mecca, Mohammed was "the despised preacher of a small 

 congregation," but after his flight (hejira) to Medina, he became 

 the leader of a powerful party and ultimately the autocratic 

 ruler of Arabia. Even before his death his followers numbered 

 thousands, while the religious zeal with which they were fired 

 has never been surpassed. Taught by Mohammed to convert 

 or kill, they threw themselves upon their neighbors with a 

 fanatical fury which overcame all obstacles, so that within one 

 short century their religion and its adherents swept like a tidal 

 wave from the barren valleys of western Arabia northward and 

 eastward through Syria over Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and 

 northwestward along the African shores of the Mediterranean to 



