ONE-ON-ONE:   The audience had a chance to interact with the characters from history.      Photo by Umer Nangiana

By Umer Nangiana


Taking its Ramadan celebrations theme a notch up, Katara Cultural Complex in its four-day Eid al-Fitr celebrations pulled huge crowds, introducing them to the ‘walking and talking’ prominent Muslim scientists and inventors from history.
In a spectacular show, held thrice every day over the four days of celebration, the life size puppets of six Muslim inventors, and four of their friends, roamed about the Katara Esplanade and directly interacted with the people, gathered in huge numbers to meet them.
The scientists’ friends, turn by turn, would go to the place of every one of them and invited them out for a stroll. The inventors spoke about their lives besides the breakthroughs they achieved in scientific developments in the Islamic golden age.
Ibn al-Haytham, who made significant contributions to the principles of optics, astronomy, mathematics, meteorology, visual perception and the scientific method, told the audience about camera obscura. In medieval Europe, he was honoured as Ptolemaeus Secundus (Ptolemy the Second) or simply called ‘The Physicist.’
“The concept was based around the idea that we have been following this Ramadan which was that of Arabic Inventors from history. We highlighted some names like Hasan bin Haytham, Al Jasri and other inventors. We highlighted their lives and the achievements that they made during their time,” Malika M al-Shraim, the Public Relations and Communications Manager, Katara Cultural Village told Community.
The show was choreographed in the form of a short play where there were four friends of the inventors who were trying to know more about them and their inventions. They would visit each one of the inventors and ask them questions about what they invented.
Abbas Ibn Firnas, an Andalusian polymath, an inventor, physician, engineer, musician and Arabic-language poet, who was reputed to have attempted flight, spoke to the audience about his inventions.
He told the people about a water clock called al-Maqata that he had designed besides the means of manufacturing colourless glass, various glass planispheres and other inventions. He also devised a chain of rings that could be used to simulate the motions of the planets and stars, and developed a process for cutting rock crystal. He has a crater on the Moon named in his honour.
The friends then moved to Ibn-e-Sina, a Persian polymath and jurist who is regarded as one of the most significant thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age. He spoke about his inventions and achievements telling people about 450 works that he had written on philosophy and medicine.
His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopaedia, that became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650. In 1973, it was reprinted in New York, USA.
The friends would also come up with terms such as continuity, time, camera and other keywords and the scientists would explain them to the audience.
“[The show] has six characters as inventors and we have four friends who are introducing them to the public. It was like a small play but in a simple way so that the general public can understand it. And we had it in both language, Arabic and English,” said Malika.
Every show was 20-minute long and there were three shows every day starting in the evenings. The show included performance by the characters and their interaction with the audience.
“The show was mainly targeted at children but the information they provided was for everyone, both for adults and children,” said the Public Relations and Communications Manager.
She added that this year Katara introduced something new called ‘Eidiya,’ which was a small gift for children and it was distributed three times every day in Katara during the four days of Eid celebrations. It was targeted at children aged 12 and below.
“In Ramadan, we highlighted the Arabic inventors and their inventions in different ways which included different exhibitions besides the interactive books exhibitions,” said Malika. She said the Eid celebrations were also part of the same theme and it highlighted more of the lives of the inventors in the form of a small play.


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