Islam Museum Islam Museum islam.museum
Search ⌕ ARENUR
Accessibility
Text size 100%

Saved on this device only — nothing is sent anywhere.

Timeline Explorer · Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) · Stop 1 of 4

Birth: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)

c. 965 CE · c. 354 AH† approximate

Arab mathematician and physicist whose Kitab al-Manazir is the principal optical work of the Islamic world. The editor places him in the fifth century AH .

Ibn al-Haytham — Encyclopaedia Britannica

Context and relations
Illustration of the setting of: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (no people shown)

Birth: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen)

c. 965 CE · c. 354 AH†

Arab mathematician and physicist whose Kitab al-Manazir is the principal optical work of the Islamic world. The editor places him in the fifth century AH .

Basra

Full page

On the map: Basra

BasraCairo

All stops in this story

  1. Birth: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) — c. 965 CE · c. 354 AH†

    Arab mathematician and physicist whose Kitab al-Manazir is the principal optical work of the Islamic world. The editor places him in the fifth century AH .

  2. Ibn al-Haytham summoned to Cairo — c. 1010 CE · c. 400 AH†

    The Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim summoned Ibn al-Haytham from Basra to Egypt to devise a regulation of the Nile flood; seeing the task impossible he feigned madness until al-Ḥākim's death in 1021 .

  3. Kitāb al-Manāẓir composed — c. 1028 CE · c. 419 AH†

    In Cairo Ibn al-Haytham composed the Book of Optics, his greatest work — built on experiment rather than conjecture, and it remade the science of vision into the seventeenth century .

  4. Death: Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) — c. 1040 CE · c. 431 AH†

    Arab mathematician and physicist whose Kitab al-Manazir is the principal optical work of the Islamic world. The editor places him in the fifth century AH .