When it comes to the roots of that modern-day staple, the cup of coffee, Italy frequently comes to mind.
However, Yemen is the original birthplace of the ubiquitous brew.
It is one of the surprise Muslim inventions that have shaped the world we live in, alongside the first university and even the toothbrush.
"1001 Inventions," a book celebrating "the forgotten" history of 1,000 years of Muslim legacy, focuses on the roots of these fundamental concepts and items, which are the foundation of everything from the bicycle to musical scales.
Surgery
Around the year 1,000, the renowned surgeon Al Zahrawi created a 1,500-page illustrated encyclopaedia of surgery, which was used as a medical reference in Europe for the next 500 years. Among his many inventions was the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds; previously, a second surgery was required to remove sutures. He is also credited with performing the first caesarean section and inventing the first pair of forceps.
Coffee
Coffee, now the most popular beverage in the Western world, was invented in Yemen about the 9th century. Coffee initially helped Sufis stay awake through late nights of devotion. After being brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee craze quickly spread throughout the empire. It had reached Turkey by the 13th century, but it wasn't until the 16th century that the beans began to boil in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.
Flying machine
"Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying machine and fly," Hassani explained. In the ninth century, he created a winged contraption that resembled a bird costume. Firnas flew aloft for a few moments in his most famous trial near Cordoba, Spain, before plunging to the ground and partially injuring his back. According to Hassani, his designs would have surely inspired legendary Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci's hundreds of years later.
University
In 859, a teenage princess named Fatima al-Firhi established the first university in Morocco, Fez. Her sister Miriam established an additional mosque, and the complex became known as the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University. Hassani hopes that the centre, which is still in operation some 1,200 years later, will remind people that learning is at the heart of the Islamic tradition and that the tale of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire young Muslim women around the world today.
Algebra
The term algebra is derived from the title of a famous 9th century Persian mathematician's book "Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala," which translates roughly as "The Book of Reasoning and Balancing." The new algebraic order, based on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, served as a unifying scheme for rational numbers, irrational numbers, and geometrical magnitudes. Al-Khwarizmi, the same mathematician, was also the first to establish the concept of raising a number to a power.
Optics
"Many of the most important advances in the study of optics have come from the Muslim world," Hassani claims. Ibn al-Haitham demonstrated about the year 1000 that people view objects via light reflecting off of them and entering the eye, refuting Euclid and Ptolemy's theories that light was emitted from the eye itself. The camera obscura phenomenon, which explains how the eye views images upright because to the relationship between the optic nerve and the brain, was also discovered by this renowned Muslim physicist.
Music
According to Hassani, Muslim musicians have had a major impact on Europe since Charlemagne attempted to compete with the music of Baghdad and Cordoba. The lute and the rahab, a precursor of the violin, are two of numerous instruments that came to Europe via the Middle East. The Arabic alphabet is also thought to have influenced modern musical scales.
The Crank
Many of the fundamentals of modern automatics, like as the groundbreaking crank-connecting rod design, were developed in the Muslim world. The crank facilitates the lifting of large things by translating rotary motion to linear motion. This technology, discovered in the 12th century by Al-Jazari, expanded over the world, giving rise to everything from the bicycle to the internal combustion engine.