MODERN MAN

~ 47 ~ of Sinjar, north of the Euphrates, and near Palmyra, yielded 562 Arabic miles as the length of a degree of the meridian—a remarkably accurate result, exceeding the real length of the degree at that place by about 2877 feet. This would make the circumference of the earth 20,400 miles and its diameter 6500. Among those who took part in this operation were the sons of Musa ibn Shakir and al-- Khwarizmi, whose tables, revised a century and a half later by the Spanish astronomer Maslamah alMajriti and translated into Latin in 1126 by Adelard of Bath, became the bases for other works both in the East and the West. No less a feat was that of AlIdrisi who, as early as the 12th century, made a map of the world in which he even showed the source of the River Nile, which was not discovered by Europe till the 19th century. All these activities were going on in the world of Islam at a time when the whole of Europe believed that the earth was flat. Ptolemy, the well-known Greek astronomer of the 2nd century, had presented the earth-centered theory of the solar system, in his famous book,