---
title: "List of inventions in the medieval Islamic world"
chunk: 1/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:38:11.746810+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

The following is a list of inventions, discoveries and scientific advancements made in the medieval Islamic world, especially during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in later states of the Age of the Islamic Gunpowders such as the Ottoman and Mughal empires. 
The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural, economic and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the eighth century to the fourteenth century, with several contemporary scholars dating the end of the era to the fifteenth or sixteenth century. This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786 to 809) with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, where scholars from various parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds were mandated to gather and translate all of the world's classical knowledge into the Arabic language and subsequently development in various fields of sciences began. Science and technology in the Islamic world adopted and preserved knowledge and technologies from contemporary and earlier civilizations, including Persia, Egypt, India, China, and Greco-Roman antiquity, while making numerous improvements, innovations and inventions.

== List of inventions ==

=== Early caliphates ===

==== Seventh century ====

Ghazal: A form of Islamic poetry that originated from the Arabian Peninsula in the late 7th century.

==== Eighth century ====
Arabesque: The distinctive Arabesque style was developed by the 11th century, having begun in the 8th or 9th century in works like the Mshatta Facade.
Astrolabe with angular scale : The astrolabe, originally invented some time between 200 and 150 BC, was further developed in the medieval Islamic world, where Muslim astronomers introduced angular scales to the design, adding circles indicating azimuths on the horizon.
Classification of chemical substances: The works attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan (written c. 850–950), and those of Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (c. 865–925), contain the earliest known classifications of chemical substances.
Damascus steel: Damascus blades were first manufactured in the Near East from ingots of Wootz steel that were imported from India.
Modern Oud: Although string instruments existed before Islam, the oud was developed in Islamic music and was the ancestor of the European lute.
Sulfur-mercury theory of metals: First attested in pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana's Sirr al-khalīqa ("The Secret of Creation", c. 750–850) and in the works attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan (written c. 850–950), the sulfur-mercury theory of metals would remain the basis of all theories of metallic composition until the eighteenth century.
Tin-glazing: The earliest tin-glazed pottery appears to have been made in Abbasid Iraq/Mesopotamia in the 8th-century. The oldest fragments found to-date were excavated from the palace of Samarra about 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Baghdad.
Panemone windmill: The earliest recorded windmill design found was Persian in origin, and was invented around the 7th-9th centuries.