3. MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE

~ 134 ~ gods. They held them to be objects of reverence rather than of conquest. The Arabs with their changed mind saw these phenomena of nature in the form of God’s creations. They saw them with an eye to conquering them for exploitation. It was this mental revolution, which enabled the Arabs to perform their historic feats in the world of irrigation and agriculture. How can we learn methods of irrigation in the desert where water is scarce? Ignorant of the true source of this Arab skill, Bertrand Russell linked it, quite irrelevantly, to their life in the desert, sans water, instead of to their mental revolution, which had come about thanks to monotheism. The science of irrigation was developed not because of their desert life but because of their monotheistic thinking. HISTORIOGRAPHY The starting point in Arnold Toynbee’s philosophy of history was his contention that the proper unit of historical study must be a civilization, rather than the traditional unit, the nation state.68