The worlds current culture is rich and diverse. There have been many influences form religion to technology. When we consider religion we often assume that it is Christianity that has had the greatest impact on the worlds culture, but this is to consider only the West and is may also run the risk of ignoring or discounting the influence that other religions have had on the world. One of these is Islam, where we can see there are the origins of many ideas that are now often perceived as western development and can be see as originating in the Muslim cultures, and as we can see how our western culture has be heavily influenced by Muslim culture with mathematics, chemistry, medicine, astrology geography and many other science based disciplines. .
In Muslim history we can see from the writings of Muhammad that anyone who spoke Arabic as their first or main language was classed as Arabic, it was not a classification of geography or birth (Zahoor, 1992). This language was the main language of the Muslim world between 800 - 1500 C E (common era). It is well known that the current numerical system originates from the Arabic but there are many other aspects of the world today that date back to this culture.
The Arab and Muslim nations were able to retrieve a great deal of the Ancient Greek work which had been lost to the west and as such it may have made a good basis form which the Muslim influence was to grow, as not only did they absorb the knowledge of the Ancient Greeks, they also examined the records of these people, extended them and corrected them (Stanton, 1953). .
It was during the era of Caliph Al-Mamun between 813 - 33 C E that we can claim the learning in the Muslim world reached its height with the establishment of a school near Baghdad where there was established a large library and the texts were translated by many scholars (Stanton, 1953). These then formed the framework for an increased awareness and interest in the world around them in terms of science of the different sorts, and it is these discoveries and learning's that have influenced the world beyond measure.