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Grand opening for 1001 Inventions in Istanbul

Turkish Prime Minister opens exhibition at iconic and historic location

Dr. Rim Turkmani of 1001 Inventions and Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu London Science Museum

Celebrating the Record-breaking Exhibition

More than 25 UK-based Arab Ambassadors attended a special gala reception

1001 Inventions to open in Istanbul

City of Istanbul to host blockbuster 1001 Inventions interactive exhibition.

Seven more awards for 1001 Inventions Film

5 Golds and Best Education film in Los Angeles and Hamburg Film Festivals.

The link between universities, libraries and learning in Muslim civilisation and today

Mathematics, science, languages…whatever subject interests you most, you might be surprised by its links with the distant past. In this zone of the exhibition, find out about the time when people assembled colossal libraries and paid for books in gold. See the intricate geometrical designs inspired by patterns in flowers and shells. And look back six centuries to when the love of learning brought Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars together to cooperate in creating knowledge.

Did You Know

...that there’s a hidden reason behind the way we write the numbers 1 to 10?

...that everyday English words like cotton, giraffe and sofa come from Arabic words hundreds of years old?

...that a pious and wealthy young woman called Fatima al-Fihri founded one of the world’s first universities?

In this zone:

Meet Fatima al-Fihri in our film, and hear how she inherited a fortune and decided to spend it building a mosque and college complex called Al-Qarawiyin, which continues to operate as a university today

Play a game to link up modern English words with their ancient roots in Arabic, Persian and Hindi, showing hundreds of years of interchange between cultures

Find out about the House of Wisdom, a prestigious academy and library that was founded a thousand years ago in Baghdad

Discover how translation of books and treatises between Arabic and European languages kept knowledge alive and fuelled scientific debate

Investigate the fate of the books held in the well-stocked libraries of early Muslim civilisation

Explore many mathematical breakthroughs made in Muslim civilisation, which in turn influenced characteristic designs in architecture and decorative arts

See a typical mortar board, part of academic dress today which has its roots in the traditional caps of the Muslim world and the old European universities