Next year, we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150th of the publication of his 'On The Origin of Species', which revolutionised our understanding of biology.
Approximately 1,000 years before the British naturalist published his theory of evolution, a scientist working in Baghdad was thinking along similar lines.
Although the Muslim world is often now seen as ill-equipped for scientific discovery, we can look back to Baghdad and see the origins of the modern scientific method, the world's first physicist and the world's first chemist; advances in surgery and anatomy, the birth of geology and anthropology; not to mention remarkable feats of engineering. (DT)