Course Corrections: Unit One and Unit Nine

Following is a dialogue I had with student, Aida, who is an excellent editor. I re-arranged the course two years ago and moved some files from Unit One to Unit Four and Unit Nine. I thought I had also moved all the quiz questions. Many students have turned in work for Unit One since then with complete answers so I did not notice that there were still some extra questions in Unit One. Note that ALL questions related to alchemy that are in the Unit One test should be in the Unit Nine exam section. I also noticed that Unit One became left-justified when I created ONE E-book from the five smaller E-books. I will be fixing this problem soon. However, in the meantime I want to post this note so if you are working on Unit One you will not have the same confusion that Aida did.

Here are some of the more specific questions she had and some of my answers...

Student Question: (from: Chapter on Medical History Overviews (sections 1-7))

On "Question 15: What does the first author claim to have been the center of all Muslim education? But what evidence in Emilie Smith's writing contradicts this?" I am not sure which author you are referring to. Are you talking about one of the authors in the lecture notes or one of the authors for the online readings. I am confused as to who I am supposed to focus on here. Also which time period are you referring to? Unless I am mistaken, the center of Islamic education changed to different areas in different periods (Starting in Baghdad and then transferring to Spain). please advise........

Karima's Response:

One possible answer is:
The First author mentions Cordoba, Seville and Granada as university centers. The second author mentions translation house in Baghdad established in 9th century. However, there is no contradiction as there may be as many centers of education as necessary.

I am referring to the “First Author” as the one who wrote “Science and Muslim Scientists”. The credit for this goes to the team from the “Islamic Scholar Software”.

Emile is the “third reading” that you link to online. You can find the quotes by the “first author” on page 13 of the E-book for Unit One.

Student Question Two:

On "Question 55: What was the number 1 thing a scientist did in islamic medieval times?" I can't find the source for this information. I am confused as to what you are looking for as an answer. I read the material in depth many times. Please advise............


Karima's Response:

He did translation. Information on the translation work scientists did can be found on page 42. I found this by typing in the word “translation” into the search engine in the E-book for Unit One.

Student Question 3:

On "Questions 56: The Arabic language was considered by the Christian scholarly world to be a language in which___________________? " I can't find the source for this information. I read the material in depth many times. Please advise.........

Karima's Response:

...."secrets of the natural world were hidden". However, a search on this yielded no results. This could be one of the sections that was transferred to a later unit. I will remove this question from the test.

Student Question 4:

On "Question 63: How is alchemy described in the last pages of this section?"
I am not sure which section is referred to here. Please advise.................

Karima's Response:

All of the main readings on alchemy were moved to Unit 9 two years ago. This question remains. I am not sure how students have been answering it these past two years! Good catch! I will move these questions to Unit 9.