Science in the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman scientific tradition was initially formed under the influence of...earlier Islamic centers of science and culture. However, after a short period of time, Ottoman science reached a point where it could influence the old centers of science and culture and serve as an example to them. On the other hand, this innovative character of the Ottomans was emphasized by the fact that as of the seventeenth century the influences of Western science gradually appeared in the Ottoman world...these developments brought the Ottomans, who represented the Islamic world as a whole, to a point of constituting a unique synthesis between Islam and the modern West. ...

Undoubtedly [Takiyeddin el-Rasid's] studies formed the apogee of Ottoman science while his activities after the foundation of the Istanbul Observatory provided the most advanced development in the tradition of Islamic astronomy. The destruction of the observatory as a result of the competition and jealousy among the statesmen under religious pretexts was considered to be the beginning of the halting of the tradition of the classical Ottoman science. ...

...Katip Çelebi...translated the work of Mercator...making use of...Western and Eastern sources...

...The new medical doctrines of Paracelsus (d- 1541) and his followers, the theories and applications of treatment with chemicals which became widespread in Holland in the seventeenth century, the new iatrochemistry appeared in the Ottoman medical literature...

...The scientific publications at the beginning of the nineteenth century were the books prepared by Hüseyin Rıfkî Tamanî (d. 1817), Chief Instructor of the Imperial School of Engineering. They were compilations and translations on the subjects of astronomy, mathematics and geography...

During the classical period, the Ottoman scientists and scholars showed a remarkable success in developing science and were able to make new contributions to various branches of science. However, in the modernization period, they were not able to show a parallel performance, but were successful in developing modern scientific terminology of universal Islamic character and the Ottoman Turkish language to a level that would enable them to express modern scientific and scholarly knowledge on various disciplines.