More than 1,000 years ago, as Europe languished in the Dark Ages, Islamic astronomers were building observatories, Islamic engineers were developing the windmill — and perfecting the waterwheel — and Islamic scientists were working out the principles of algebra, laying the foundations of optics and even attempting to fly.
This was the era of Bait al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom 7 an early version of today’s "think tanks;" from which came translations of Greek mathematical and scientific papers, breakthroughs in geometry and, eventually, discoveries in everything from hydrology to medicine — all of which were transmitted to the West.
As the tides of history ebbed and flowed, however, Europe gradually caught up and surpassed the Islamic world in science and technology — to be, in turn, surpassed by the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan — and by the time of the Industrial Revolution, the Islamic countries, lacking I trained manpower and an adequate industrial base had been eclipsed by technological developments in the West.
Though the Muslim world was, of course, painfully aware of the gap that had opened — and had widened over the centuries — there actually was very little they could do on their own to bridge it. Lacking the infrastructure to develop industry — and the coal to fuel it — all they could do was import knowhow and equipment.
This system of modernization — as distinct from the slow, trial and error approach – is expedient, of course, but poses dangers; it tends to foster dependency on the West and could stifle indigenous scientific and technological initiative — a prime concern of many science policy-makers.
On the other hand, this influx of outside scientific and technological influence — coupled with large scale development programs — has also kindled a new interest in the study of the sciences. Recently, in fact, the number of Arabs pursuing scientific careers has mushroomed. Over the past 30 years the number of Arab students who have earned degrees from colleges or universities in the Arab world has been leapfrogging at a geometric rate: nearly doubling every five years since the early 1950’s. By 1975, there were about 760,000 graduates, and by 1980 close to 1.5 million. In the sciences — and even more so in technological disciplines — this steadily accelerating pursuit of higher education has been particularly striking. By 1976, some 75,000 Arabs had earned degrees in engineering, 60,000 in agriculture, 50,000 in the basic sciences, 50,000 in medicine and 16,000 in pharmacology, to name only a few fields. It has also been estimated that by 1978, some 24,000 Arabs held doctoral degrees — mainly from the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union — and half of S them were degrees in the sciences. In the same year, scientists in the Arab world generated some 2,000 technical papers.
This enormous growth — documented by Lebanese scientist Dr. A. B. Zahian in his book, Science and Science Policy the Arab World (1980, Croom Helm Ltd., London), has already led to the collection and accumulation of scientific knowledge now being shared with the Arab states and the larger international scientific community. A concerned critic of Arab science, consultant to several international scientific organizations, and leading authority on the application of science and technology to development, Zahlan says that:
The Arab World is at the threshold of momentous changes that are being heralded by the increasing access to higher education. Within the following two decades, if the trends of the past three decades persist, more than 12 million Arabs will graduate from universities in the Arab world. Of these, at least six million would have received an education in the applied or basic sciences.
What must be added, furthermore, are, graduates from universities in the West. According to Zahlan, some 250,000 Arab students were enrolled in universities in Europe and North America during 1980, the latest year for which complete figures are available. That could mean that by the turn of the century, fully 10 percent of the total Arab population will have received a education. Within the following two decades, if the trends of the past three decades persist, more than 12 million Arabs will graduate from universities in the Arab world. Of these, at least six million would have received an education in the applied or basic sciences.
It would be misleading, nevertheless, to imply that this scientific resurgence could be compared with the science of the Golden Age. For one thing, scientific efforts in the Islamic world today are more often focused on applied science — technology — than on pure science. With inumerable practical problems to solve and with the information boom that has led to increased specialization, today’s scientists simply do not have time for much abstract speculation; instead they concentrate on research and development that, they hope, will provide concrete solutions to immediate problems, a philosophy that Saudi Arabia’s Third Five-Year Development Plan (1980-85) clearly enunciated:
Saudi Arabia ’s general attitude toward science and technology is based upon a traditional respect for knowledge and appreciation of the human effort expended in its accumulation and development. The kingdom has always appreciated the contribution that science and technology can make to social and economic development. Accordingly, the objectives of the national science and technology policy are twofold: . . . the transformation of society’s material conditions through the selection, transfer and management of advanced technology while simultaneously preserving cultural values; and, in the development of the kingdom’s natural and human resources, (the objectives) focus on reducing the economy’s dependence on foreign manpower and on depletable hydrocarbon resources.
This philosophy also guides the policies and activities of several national scientific organizations that have been set up in the Islamic world in recent years — organizations such as the Saudi Arabian National Center for Science and Technology (SANCST).
Founded in 1977, SANCST is the central body responsible for promoting and coordinating scientific research in the kingdom. SANCST, therefore, tries to combine the best of both worlds; it encourages both internal Saudi research as well as initiatives from outside scientific circles, and has already achieved a remarkable degree of international cooperation in its effort to bridge the scientific and technological gap.
As one example, SANCST has entered into a project agreement with the Canadian National Research Council to help design and test the critical components in a planned national observatory and has signed a technical agreement with the Republic of China in the field of single cell protein manufacture. Its most ambitious international project, however, is SQL- ERAS, a $100 million joint venture with the U. S. Department of Energy, in which large scale solar energy experiments are being conducted in both countries. Projects include a plan to supply electricity from photovoltaic cells to two villages north of Riyadh and, in the U.S. , the design of solar-powered desalination systems. Dr. Bakr Khoshaim, SOLERAS program director in Saudi Arabia , has called the joint project “a model of cooperation between two nations in pursuit of a technology which will benefit them both.”
The SANCST organization also sponsors research at academic centers through scientific grants. At Riyadh ’s King Sa’ud University , for example, scientists and engineers have received SANCST grants to investigate the biosynthesis of protein from hydrocarbons, ways to enhance recovery from Saudi oil fields, and the effect of super-fine sand and saline well water on the compressive strength of locally produced cement mortar and concrete.
At King Abdulaziz University in Jiddah, scientists are developing a nuclear power plant simulator, conducting geochronological and paleomagnetic studies of potentially mineral-rich areas of the Hijaz, and looking into the chemical properties of medicinal plants in the kingdom.
Scientists at the University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran — one of the kingdom’s most active research centers — are, with SANCST grants , investigating an array of technical subjects, including: stratigraphic analysis of phosphate deposits in Northwest Arabia, viscosity behavior of Saudi crude oils, the removal of nitrogenous compounds from activated sludge, and the use of residual stress gradients in anti-corrosion designs. Qne UPM engineer- Dr. Fouad A. Ahmed—has been involved in the three-dimensional recording of Islamic and other civic monuments, a good example of Western technology pressed into the service of traditional values.
Research at King Faisal University , with campuses in Damman and al-Hasa in the Eastern Province , centers primarily on agriculture. Examples of projects under way are testing of new drugs used to treat animal parasites, studies of diseases that affect date palms, and an investigation of the main drainage canal in Hofufto seeff the water can be used for fish cultivation.
The kingdom’s newest university KFU, last December, also graduated a batch of students from its new medical school, and though there are two other medical schools in the kingdom, the KFU graduation was marked by an official ceremony - an indication of the importance the country leaders attach to the development of highly trained cadres in scientific fields, particularly in the medical sciences.
In history, of course, there is strong Islamic precedent for commitments to medical science. Muslim scientists, for instance, discovered the circulation of the blood in veins centuries before Harvey did, worked out principles of infectious disease and performed delicate eye operations with a skill not duplicated until modern times. During the medieval period, Islamic physicians also founded hospitals throughout Middle Eastern urban centers- including Makkah and Medina on the Arabian Peninsula .
It was particularly appropriate, there fore, when Saudi Arabia, seven years ago in Riyadh, opened the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and, one year later, the related Cancer Research Institute (see Aramco World, July-August 1979) Equipped with the most sophisticated medical devices that Western technology can muster — everything from a computerized multiple blood sample analyzer to a cyclotron to produce radioactive isotopes used in cancer diagnosis and treatment - these facilities are model institutions in the region and serve as essential domestic training grounds for Arab medical specialists.
Clearly, SaudiArabia is ahead in its rapid acquisition of scientific and technological resources — and in its commitment in these fields. But it is by no means the only Arab country backing scientific activity Egypt , for example, has been a Middle East pathfinder for 30 years ever since the 195Ps, when its technical manpower more than quadrupled and four major new scientific institutions were founded: the Supreme Science Council, the Atomic Energy Agency, the Desert Institute and the National Research Center — once ranked as the largest scientific institute in the Arab world. In 1971, Egypt also set up the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology to organize applied research a such areas as food, agriculture and water resources — especially the impact of the Aswan High Dam.
In Syria the Scientific Studies and Research Unit, established in 1972, has focused on applied and industrial chemislogy applied physics, electronics, mechaniiter- calengineering, science policy and computer science; it has also conducted studies of housing costs, banking activities, water distribution, telecommunications and land reclamation.
In Iraq, a major oil producer like Saudi Arabia, rapid development of its scientific and technological potential has been given high priority. The Foundation for Scientific Research, established in 1963, today has eight specialized research bodies affiliated with it: the Agricultural Research Center, the Petroleum Research Institute, the Institute for Applied Research on Natural Resources, the Building Research Center, the Palm and Date Research Center, the Biological Research Center, the Scientific Documentation Center and the Directorate General of Scientific Youth Welfare. By 1975, the University of Baghdad was operating six research centers, including one in the medical sciences.
Since 1972, Iraq’s Nuclear Research Institute (NRI) has been providing critical technical services to different sectors of the economy, as in its studies of corrosion in oil and gas pipelines and in its production and utilization of radioactive materials in hydrology studies. The NRI has a range of research departments, working on nuclear reactors, physics, chemistry, engineering and instrumentation, biology and geology.
In Lebanon, much of the scientific research takes place at the American University of Beirut, with work at the country’s other well-established colleges and universities sparked by the creation of the National Council of Scientific Research, which began awarding research grants in 1968. And in Jordan, the Royal Scientific Society, founded in 1970 as an independent, non-profit research and development organization, has been working in the fields of education, economic research, electronic and mechanical engineering, and computer systems.
Not surprisingly, given the traditional Islamic-world problems with farming, much scientific research has focused on agriculture — and still does today as scientist from Aleppo to Abu Dhabi grapple with the urgent problem of feeding growing populations from depleted land.
Centuries ago, what is now the Arab East was the granary of the known world, as well as the birthplace of the date palm and the site of ingenious advances in irrigation. Gradually, however, war, pestilence and drought destroyed the region’s fertility until, up to a decade ago, extensive agriculture was deemed impossible in the region — 90 percent of which was desert. Today, though, agricultural history is once more being made in the Arab world. In Saudi Arabia, for example, agricultural scientists are growing tomatoes and cucumbers without soil. In Libya agronomists are creating great circles of watered farmland in the heart of the Sahara. In the United Arab Emirates an asphalt carpet has been laid beneath the sand to prevent water loss, and in Syria scientists are developing new "miracle" strains of traditional Middle East crops.
None of these experiments is entirely new to the Arab East. Since the 1960’s the Arab Lands Agricultural Development Program (ALAD) has been working hard at improving the productivity of the region, as well as experimenting with the introduction of the "buffalo gourd" (see Aramco World, November-December 1972), a protein-rich plant with roots that can reach water even in deserts.
But ALAD’s research program is being carried even further by the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA). An extension of the global network of agricultural scientists who helped bring the "green revolution" to Asia, Africa and the Americas with "miracle" wheat and rice, ICARDA, in 1977, began similar experiments with the basic crops of the Middle East: wheat, barley, lentils, broad beans and chickpeas.
At ICARDA’s experimental station near Aleppo in Syria, their scientists have crossed the most hardy local crop varieties with high-yielding international varieties to produce plants that will simultaneously resist disease and drought, tolerate high temperatures and salty soil, and produce a greater abundance of more nutritious, tastier food.
In the five years since its formation, ICARDA, says its Sudanese Director Dr. Muhammad Nour, has made a series of "wonderful breakthroughs" in agricultural
Science Council, the Atomic Energy Agency, the Desert Institute and the National Research Center — once ranked as the largest scientific institute in the Arab world. In 1971, Egypt also set up the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology to organize applied research a such areas as food, agriculture and water resources — especially the impact of the Aswan High Dam.
In Syria the Scientific Studies and Research Unit, established in 1972, has focused on applied and industrial chemislogy applied physics, electronics, mechaniiter- calengineering, science policy and computer science; it has also conducted studies of housing costs, banking activities, water distribution, telecommunications and land reclamation.
In Iraq, a major oil producer like Saudi Arabia, rapid development of its scientific and technological potential has been given high priority. The Foundation for Scientific Research, established in 1963, today has eight specialized research bodies affiliated with it: the Agricultural Research Center, the Petroleum Research Institute, the Institute for Applied Research on Natural Resources, the Building Research Center, the Palm and Date Research Center, the Biological Research Center, the Scientific Documentation Center and the Directorate General of Scientific Youth Welfare. By 1975, the University of Baghdad was operating six research centers, including one in the medical sciences.
Since 1972, Iraq’s Nuclear Research Institute (NRI) has been providing critical technical services to different sectors of the economy, as in its studies of corrosion in oil and gas pipelines and in its production and utilization of radioactive materials in hydrology studies. The NRI has a range of research departments, working on nuclear reactors, physics, chemistry, engineering and instrumentation, biology and geology.
In Lebanon, much of the scientific research takes place at the American University of Beirut, with work at the country’s other well-established colleges and universities sparked by the creation of the National Council of Scientific Research, which began awarding research grants in 1968. And in Jordan, the Royal Scientific Society, founded in 1970 as an independent, non-profit research and development organization, has been working in the fields of education, economic research, electronic and mechanical engineering, and computer systems.
Not surprisingly, given the traditional Islamic-world problems with farming, much scientific research has focused on agriculture — and still does today as scientist from Aleppo to Abu Dhabi grapple with the urgent problem of feeding growing populations from depleted land.
Centuries ago, what is now the Arab East was the granary of the known world, as well as the birthplace of the date palm and the site of ingenious advances in irrigation. Gradually, however, war, pestilence and drought destroyed the region’s fertility until, up to a decade ago, extensive agriculture was deemed impossible in the region — 90 percent of which was desert. Today, though, agricultural history is once more being made in the Arab world. In Saudi Arabia, for example, agricultural scientists are growing tomatoes and cucumbers without soil. In Libya agronomists are creating great circles of watered farmland in the heart of the Sahara. In the United Arab Emirates an asphalt carpet has been laid beneath the sand to prevent water loss, and in Syria scientists are developing new "miracle" strains of traditional Middle East crops.
None of these experiments is entirely new to the Arab East. Since the 1960’s the Arab Lands Agricultural Development Program (ALAD) has been working hard at improving the productivity of the region, as well as experimenting with the introduction of the "buffalo gourd" (see Aramco World, November-December 1972), a protein-rich plant with roots that can reach water even in deserts.
But ALAD’s research program is being carried even further by the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA). An extension of the global network of agricultural scientists who helped bring the "green revolution" to Asia, Africa and the Americas with "miracle" wheat and rice, ICARDA, in 1977, began similar experiments with the basic crops of the Middle East: wheat, barley, lentils, broad beans and chickpeas.
At ICARDA’s experimental station near Aleppo in Syria, their scientists have crossed the most hardy local crop varieties with high-yielding international varieties to produce plants that will simultaneously resist disease and drought, tolerate high temperatures and salty soil, and produce a greater abundance of more nutritious, tastier food.
In the five years since its formation, ICARDA, says its Sudanese Director Dr. Muhammad Nour, has made a series of "wonderful breakthroughs" in agricultural research that are already helping improve the staple diet of the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East . These, says Dr. Nour, include the development of five new types of high-yielding, better-tasting cereal that are currently being incorporated in the growing programs of 25 nations; introduction of a new, more nutritious variety of broad bean in the Nile Valley; and development of a new type of chickpea resistant to a common fungus disease which regularly decimates Middle East pea crops. In addition, says Dr. Nour, ICARDA has trained over 250 agricultural scientists and technicians from all over the Middle East who are now helping improve their own country’s food output.
This research, of course, is aimed at increasing output from acreage already under cultivation, but other experiments in Libya and the United Arab Emirates are designed to expand cultivable land. By tapping so-called ”fossil” water—which has been locked beneath the desert for thousands of years — and drawing it to the surface and sprinkling it over the sand from huge booms revolving horizontally on wheels—Libyan scientists are creating great discs of farmland in the Sahara. And in the UAE’S desert reclamation project, agricultural scientists have laid a three millimeter thick carpet of asphalt under the sand at a depth of one meter. The “carpet” prevents irrigation water from soaking into the sand and also stops salt seeping up from the sub-soil on a five-acre experimental farm the Salaymat district of Abu Dhabi. As a result of such innovative experiment, UAE crop values rose 76 percent between 1977 and 1980.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been experimenting with “hydraponics” — growing vegetables without soil. In a type of hydroponics called “NFT” — nutrient film technique - plants are grown in plastic trays into which runs a solution of water and dissolved plant food. Housed in humidity-controlled greenhouses, crops of cucumbers and tomatoes have been harvested in just five to eight weeks after transplanting. More recently, the scientists have also been trying to grow plants in sterilized sand irrigated with a nutrient-packed drip. The sand culture program is exciting, agronomists say, because it can be carried out less expensively than hydroponics but with similar results.
To consolidate these gains in agriculture, as well as in energy, medicine, pollution control, hydrology and many other fields - and to coordinate research efforts — several regional organizations have been set up - another indication of how much science Arab countries is focused on development. Some examples are the Arab Regional Center for the Transfer and Development of Technology, the Arab Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, and the Union of Arab National Research Councils. Another important group is the Confer ence of Ministers of Arab States Responsible for the Application of Science and Technology to Development (CASTARAB). Aimed at increasing regional cooperation in various fields of research, CASTARAB first brought together ministers from 18 Arab nations in 1976 in Rabat , Morocco and has scheduled a second conference in late 1982 in Tunis .
Some countries do more than others, of course; not all the countries in the Islamic world have been blessed with petroleum riches. As a result, scientists — and potential scientists — frequently emigrate in frustration. Dr. Zahlan estimates that there are now 27,000 Arabs with doctoral degrees, but that fully half have emigrated because of insufficient support in their native lands. “National support for research and development activity” warns Zahlan, “is very low”
Abu Salam of Pakistan — winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 — has a similar view. If scientific enterprise is ever to flourish in the Muslim world, Dr. Salam says, it will be necessary to spend $4 to $8 billion a year on research and development, with one-fifth that amount earmarked for pure science as distinct from technology.
Few countries will ever be able to afford an outlay of that magnitude, of course, and even many of the biggest oil producers would not find it easy to allocate such sums to pure science right now in the midst of the massive industrialization programs that are already under way. Nevertheless, a start has been made — at two outstanding centers in the Islamic East for the promotion of science and technology: the Research Institute at the University of Petroleum and Minerals (UPM) in Dhahran, and the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research
(KISR).
At these institutes Muslim scientists are collecting and absorbing scientific and technological knowledge from the world’s most highly industrialized nations and — far more significant — are attempting to transform it, adapt it, and redigest it — in a form palatable and usable in their own societies and others in the Arabian Gulf and beyond.
To compare the efforts of these institutes to Bait al-Hikma of Baghdad — as some observers tend to do — may seem an exaggeration, but it is not just romantic yearning for the Golden Age; real parallels do exist. Ninth century Islamic scholars, after all, also collected and absorbed a wholly alien intellectual tradition and from an intellectual fertilization cutting across national, linguistic, religious and cultural bounds, built a renaissance upon it.
In Kuwait and Saudi Arabia , furthermore, inquisitive and highly educated native minds are joining others from the Islamic world and the major science centers of the West and Far East . As scholars at the House of Wisdom looked to Byzantium and beyond, those at UPM and KTSR are reaching out to Tokyo , to Pasadena — and to points in between.
It is important to remember that the Kuwait institute is barely a decade old and LTPM’S has only been operative since 1977. In a sense, they are the instant offshoots of newly prosperous societies, and while each of the institutes has enunciated a clear determination to apply Western technology and not just swallow it wholesale, neither holds any illusions that it can— in the words ofa1978 study — change from “technology taker” to “technology maker” overnight. In fact, the UPM institute and KJSR are themselves bold experiments.
At the UPM Research Institute, for instance, scientists last fall took occupancy of the newest, and one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the Middle East . There they are focusing their attentions on such matters as how to predict and control the movement of sand dunes; how to calculate oil spill paths; how to maximize oil and gas production through the simulation of underground reservoirs; how to adapt solar technology to dust-blown regions; how — in an area criss-crossed with myriad steel pipelines containing precious oil, gas and water — to control corrosion; and how to preserve the fragile desert environment as Saudi Arabia engineers its own industrial revolution.
To solve such problems, the institute — housed in a six-story edifice simply called “Building 15” by those at UPM — has organized its scholars into divisions: metrology, standards and materials, geology and minerals, environmental and water resources, energy resources, and economics and industrial development. The top floor of the building is reserved for experiments in petroleum and gas technology — under a roof with glass in-sets specially designed to allow for the dangerous but unlikely event of an explosive accident.
“The new building is unparalleled,” says Dr. ‘Abdallah Dabbagh, institute director. “It is the most modern scientific research facility in the Middle East .”
Even a casual inspection suggests that this is no exaggeration. Built around a utility core spine, it contains offices, confer- ence and filing rooms, more than 100 labs, each supplied with piped nitrogen gas and four types of water — raw, distilled, domestic hot and de-ionized — and each designed to conform to strict environmental standards. In the dimensonal lab, for example — where accuracy of length measurements is essential — temperatures are maintained at 20°C. with a tolerance of only one-third of a degree Celsius. Humidity is kept at under 40 percent, plus or minus 5 percent, and the dust level is minimized to under 700 grains per cubic foot.
The institute’s computer power comes from links to UPM’S giant IBM 3033 and IBM 370-158. The institute itself also owns mini-computer systems for use by its divisions. In addition, it boasts strategic computer brain power through its online access to the Lockheed Information System data base in Palo Alto , California , and to the System Development Corporation data base in Santa Monica via direct telecommunication hookup through Bahrain.
Utilizing such resources, Dr. Zeini Sa’ati is heading up an effort to establish a computerized information center at the institute. Dr. Sa’ati also is teamed with Dr. Rida Siraj al-Thiga in organizing a group of scientists and engineers in a “computer Arabization” project which could have far- reaching effects both on the work of Arab scientists and on joint Arab-Western endeavors.
Such endeavors are not unfamiliar to institute director Dabbagh — who won a bachelor’s degree in geology from the American University of Beirut , and a doctorate in structural geology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and spent a year as visiting lecturer at Princeton . But he never forgot his origins — in Taif — and in 1976 he returned to Saudi Arabia where, about two years later, he became director of the Research Institute.
As director, Dr. Dabbagh believes that “transfer of technology does not take place without original applied research.”
Accordingly, much of the research under way at the institute is directly related to three environmental factors that dramatically affect life in the Arabian peninsula — the sun, sand and sea.
Because Saudi Arabia is drenched with more solar energy in a year than the energy contained in all the earth’s conventional fuel reserves, the kingdom has long advocated research into the solar alternative ( See Aramco World, September-October 1981). In fact, the kingdom has been a major international sponsor of such research — which is now being conducted at four of the kingdom’s universities. It was the institute, however, which spearheaded the solar movement in Saudi Arabia , and which recently installed, on the roof of Building No. 15, a comprehensive monitoring station to measure 16 solar and meteorological parameters to help scientists gauge the energy potential of Arabian sunlight.
According to Said Ahmed Said, a Sudanese mechanical engineer with degrees from Brighton Polytechnic and UPM, the station will be connected to an automatic data acquisition system, including a Hewlett Packard 3495A multiplexing scanner that allows measurements to be taken on sequential, random or single scanner channels. The system controller, the Hewlett Packard 9845B, processes the measurements made through the data acquisition system and presents the results in usable formats.
If Arabia ’s blistering sun is a blessing in disguise, its drifting sand is not; sand, in fact, threatens billions of dollars of infrastructure: super highways, gas processing plants, buildings and even towns. The institute, therefore, has assigned sand experiments a high priority. Simultaneously, scientists in two separate divisions at the institute are working on techniques to predict how sand moves and to counteract encroachment. One approach is a collaborative effort by Uruguayan-born Danilo Anton and Ghanaian Kwasi Bohfah, who have mapped out a strategy to combat sand encroachment.
“Our experience shows that a final solution to the sand problem initially requires the mapping, classification and evaluation of sand deposits in upwind areas;’ says Anton. "It may also be necessary to install sand traps, wind stations, tracers and piezometers. One single shamal season — often one single sand storm caused by those fierce northerly winds — can give an idea of local sand paths, information needed for detailed designs of roads, power lines, runways, communities and industrial plants."
Meanwhile, Bohfah, who holds a Ph.D. in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology, has conducted extensive experiments with a UPM wind tunnel to determine how such sand formations as parabolic dunes move in a given wind field.
Another, more theoretical approach is proposed by Dr. Husseyn Murat Cekirge, who uses an IBM 3033 computer to model sand dune behavior. If successful, Cekirges analysis will provide a predictive model of how sand dunes migrate over time, a notable contribution to the theory of sediment transport and a possible breakthrough for those working on the practical applications of such theories.
Cekirge’s team of Saudi, Turkish and American co-workers in the institute water resources and environmental division is also engaged in a study of oil pollution in the Arabian Gulf, the world’s busiest supertanker shipping lane, By computing convective and tidal current son their hydrodynamic model and approximating wind-induced currents - by measuring wind velocity 10 meters above the water’s surface— the team has calculated the likely movements of hypothetical spills originating at varying locations and at different times of the year.
In another project, David Tarazi, acting head of the environmental division, is using mobile meteorological laboratories that are, he says, capable of monitoring "all the parameters required by the Meteorological and Environmental Protection Agency in Jiddah, as well as those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’ Laden with equipment, these vans give scientists the flexible means to track factors that affect air and pollution.
Saudi Arabia’s hopes for the immediate future depend, of course, on the efficient exploitation of its hydrocarbon resources- and the Research Institute is playing a role. Eventually, says Dr. ‘Ali Ma’adah, head of the division of petroleum and gas technology "We will have about 20 laboratories equipped with the most up-to-date equipment in the field — to carry out research vital to the Saudi petroleum and petrochemical industry"
Currently, researchers are studying the characteristics of reservoir liquids and gases, analyzing of drilling core samples and developing a data bank on Saudi oil and gas fields. They also are probing downstream hydrocarbon industries — petroleum refining, gas treatment and processing, and petrochemicals- all important to the new industrial cities of Jubail and Yanbu’. Plans to experiment with petrochemical products are also being discussed that may reduce the kingdom’s reliance on expensive imports. One example is the manufacture of paper from plastics instead of from wood pulp.
Water desalination is another crucial field, and scientists in the petroleum and gas technology division are studying the efficiency and economy of methods such as distillation or reverse osmosis. They also are studying existing plants in an effort to improve their capacities, reduce corrosion and cut down on the formation of precipates inside heat exchangers - all problems associated with the treatment of seawater and brackish water.
The problem of corrosion is the bailiwick of Dr. Alexandar Vajda, an urbane Hungarian-born scientist, who has under- taken a survey of Jubail's industrial area. At a 20-square-kilometer site some 100 kilometers north of Dhahran, his staff of 30 assistants have dug a grid pattern of 800 holes, none less than 90 cm. deep; approximately 1.5 kilos of earth was excavated from each hole. Hauled back to the laboratory, these samples are tested for chlorine, moisture and sulfate content, conductivity, acidity and resistivity.
Results already established confirm that corrosion will pose serious maintenance problems at Jubail Industrial City But with the kind of data Vajda and his team are producing - six detailed volumes of information have been produced in just one and a half years - more effective ways of combating corrosion may be found in time. Under study are the possibilities of passing electric current over metal surfaces, coating corrosion-prone surfaces with epoxy, using chemicals to neutralize acid in water and applying bactericidal agents. The institute also is planning to build an experimental desalination and corrosion research station on the Arabian Gulf shore as the kingdom's primary facility for testing in these fields. Dr. Vajda says he is optimistic that the station will be "equivalent to the best corrosion centers in the world."
The institute also is researching ways to utilize surplus sulfur, a by-product of the kingdom's massive gas-gathering and processing network.
Further afield, the institute has recently subscribed to NASA's LANDSAT satellite program, in which orbiting multispectral scanners record highly detailed data about the earth's surface in digital form-data that can be decoded to produce extremely useful images. (See Aramco World, March- April 1982). When color-enhanced, these vivid and almost psychedelic pictures - especially useful in Saudi Arabia because of the relative lack of distortions from cloud cover and surface vegetation - can be used in geology, hydrological and agricultural studies, census-taking, land use planning, monitoring marine ecosystems, pollution control and other areas.
The UPM Research Institute is growing rapidly with its staff of 150 full-time employees expected to mushroom to 350 or 400 by 1984. Optimistic that one day it may be entirely self-supporting, it already has 13 completed research contracts from the government or private industry to its credit and some 20 others in progress.
Among contracts completed or under way are a reservoir simulation project for the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, a model of oil spill trajectories for Aramco, a study of air pollution for the Saudi Arabian Fertilizer Company, and a study of the water distribution system in the capital of Riyad for the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources.
Whether the institute will eventually turn from applied to pure research, putting it in a league with the world's high- powered think tanks, is a question Saudi Arabia cannot answer now. For what the kingdom needs - and what the Research Institute hopes to provide - are immediate, practical solutions for a nation moving headlong down the road to industrialization. In the words of its director, "We are looking to the problems of today."
In Kuwait something very similar - if older - is happening at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR).
Established in February, 1967 by the Arabian Oil Company Limited of Japan, to carry out an obligation incurred under its oil concession agreement with the Kuwait government, KISR is conducting experiment that its scientists hope will help solve national and regional problems. One high priority project, for example, involves attempts to increase local food production - a difficult task in Kuwait's arid climate.
Researchers are also studying methods - of removing metal and chemical pollutants from millions of gallons of waste water poured by Kuwait's oil refineries into the sea each day; if they could remove the pollutants, the waste could be reused for irrigation, and pollution in the Gulf would be reduced - another KISR goal.
The scope of this work represents a substantial change from KISR'S modest beginning. Back in 1967, KISR had a total of four Japanese scientists and one division, but by early 1981 had 66 scientists and 91 researchers - mostly Arab - and five divisions dealing with food resources, environment and earth sciences, engineering, petroleum and minerals, and technoeconomics.
Applied research, of course, has a dramatic ring, but Souheil Tawil, manager of KISR's Publications and Public Information Department, quickly makes it clear that KISR'S expectations are realistic. "We're not out to recreate the wheel," he says.
KTSR'S projects seem to support that view. Almost without exception they are focused on problems directly identifiable with Kuwait and its neighbors - such as the ecology of the Arabian Gulf.
Described by the environmental information agency Earth scan as "one of the world’s most fragile seas," the Gulf today must cope with the potentially dangerous input of the world’s heaviest concentration of water desalination plants, more than 20 oil refineries and petrochemical, fertilizer and natural gas plants — plus untreated sewage from the burgeoning cities of the Gulf and potential spillage from the 100 tankers that normally sail through the Strait of Hormuz each day.
Because it is shallow and almost land- locked, these polluting effects last longer in the Gulf than in the open seas; there is no way for the Gulf to flush the pollutants into the Arabian Sea. KISR, therefore, is trying to accumulate data by identifying pollutants — a step towards recommending abatement methods.
KTSR’s interest in the Gulf also includes sea food. Appropriately, since fish play an important part in the diets of both Japan and Kuwait, KISR’s early activities focused on fish; even today, the Agriculture and Fisheries Department still accounts for one quarter of the institute’s staff, largely because shrimp — one of the department’s main concerns — is Kuwait’s second largest natural resource. In 1981, in fact, each five-pound box of Gulf king prawn was bringing as much as a barrel of oil on Japanese and American markets; shrimp, moreover, is a renewable resource and thus could still be earning money for Kuwait long after its non-renewable petroleum runs out.
In recent years, however, over-fishing, pollution and destruction of coastal breeding grounds — by land reclamation — have drastically reduced the Gulf’s shrimp population. From a peak of about 9,000 tons annually in the 1960’s, shrimp landings by Kuwaiti fishermen have dropped to about 4,500 tons a year.
TSR, therefore, has zeroed in on ways to safeguard the shrimp industry. Between 1972 and 1979, KTSR hatched, reared and released into the Gulf over 120 million young shrimps in an effort to re-stock the declining shrimp population, but subsequently abandoned the program when harvests continued to fall and, in 1980, it decided to raise young shrimps and fish to marketable size on land. The institute built 20 large ponds —10 each for shrimp and fish — at al-Khiran in southern Kuwait, and last year marine scientists began testing different rearing methods in two of them; they hope to try, for example, the ‘raceway’ system - a complex of fast flowing canals in which shrimp put on weight quickly by constantly swimming against the current — and thus absorbing more food.
Another concern for KTSR is energy needs after petroleum resources are exhausted. Accordingly, in 1976, the institute launched a solar energy program that has already produced cooling systems to replace air conditioners in greenhouses and homes. KISR has also experimented with a kindergarten in Kuwait City-where solar collectors installed on the roof heat water—and has helped design and build an experimental solar power station; early this year it was still not operating, but plans call for it to convert the sun’s rays into energy for use, primarily, in the distillation of fresh water from the sea.
As millions of gallons of water are produced each day in Kuwait by an energy-hungry evaporation process, KISR scientists are continuously seeking new power-thrifty desalination methods. Like scientists at the UPM institute, they are experimenting, for example, with "reverse osmosis," in which ultra-fine filters are used to strain salt from sea water. This process is air already being used at desalination plants in Gulf states.
Scientists at KISR are also testing the effect of heat, humidity and sand abrasion on imported building materials to determine which ones are best suited for Kuwait; developing a computerized library management system; and assessing methods of recycling industrial waste — including thousands of discarded automobiles. In, fact, so many experiments are under way at KlSR that the institute is fast out growing its facilities. Early this year, buildings originally designed as garages were being pressed into service as offices at KISR headquarters on the outskirts of Kuwait City, as workmen raced to complete a new KISR complex nearby.
The complex is essential. Since the Kuwait government took over the running of the institute from the Arabian Oil Company in 1973, KISR has quadrupled in size and now boasts more disciplines than many older institutes in the West. Indeed, its scope is such that it provides Kuwait with a wide range of on-the-spot expertise to help solve general problems, but also enables the institute to set up multi- discipline task forces to tackle specific ones. A special task force, comprising two metallurgists, an electrologist, two chemists and several engineers, has opened an investigation into the chronic problem of sea water corrosion in the cooling of local industries; this corrosion costs Kuwait millions of dollars a year.
Originally, most of KISR’s research was directed from within, but in recent years it has become increasingly more responsive to outside needs. At present, about 20 per cent of the research carried out at KISR is supported by clients through contracts or specific grants, and KISR hopes to boost that to at least 50 percent of total research volume by 1984.
Unfortunately, KISR has discovered, old habits die hard. Thus many Kuwaitis still prefer to call in Western expertise rather than turn to KISR. For example, Dr. Adel Halassa, head of KISR’S Petroleum, Petrochemicals and Materials Division, spent 17 years working for Firestone in America, and was considered an expert. But as soon as he got back to Kuwait people would say, "Who do you think you are — a Bedouin trying to tell us about plastics?"
"They’ve gotten used to calling in outsiders every time they have a problem," says Halassa. "I say: ‘Give us your problem. Let us in the door.'"
This is changing slowly. Since many of the problems being tackled by KISR, such as corrosion and desalination, are common to other nations of the Gulf, the institute hopes eventually to establish itself as a regional scientific center. But again, says Suheil Tawil, the main problem is "establishing credibility."
So far, in fact, the institute has not done too badly. KISR operates one of the few all-Arab crude oil analyzing laboratories. Its Complete Arab Telex (CAT) with simplified keyboards of one character per Arabic letter, regardless of how many forms it has, is reportedly nearing commercial production for the Arab world.
KISR’s solar house is only a short walk from the institute’s central building, but other projects are more distant. The little shaikhdom of Kuwait — with a total land area of 19,295 square kilometers (7,332 square miles) — is sprinkled with KISR installations: a shrimping and marine biology station on the coast at Salmiya, a desalination project at Doha, and — a particularly important project in today’s ecology-conscious climate — the site of a projected national park at Salmiya.
To Samira Omar, the national park will be vital. A Kuwaiti and an assistant research scientist at KISR, she holds an M.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in range management, and originally had planned to return to Berkeley to continue her studies. Then, how- ever, she got involved in a nine-month project, when KISR was asked to plan the park — on a 20-square-kilometer site at Safrniya (7.6 square miles) and to report on the geological and geomorphological aspects, and the flora and fauna of the region.
Like Dr. ‘Ali’s computer center, Samira Omar’s park will be a challenge. In a country with as harsh a climate as Kuwait’s, and a fairly substantial livestock population to support (450,000 sheep and 28,000 goats), Samira’s expertise in range management is obviously of practical value. In seeking better forage, for example, she has experimented with saltbush—a plant with a high protein content and a degree of resistance to salinity. Inside a greenhouse only steps away from KISR’s four-story central building, she contrasts the growth of rows of ‘arfaj, as saltbush is called in Arabic, some nourished with organic fertilizer and others with distilled water.
Samira’s work suggests the role of KTSR. As Kazem Behbehani, deputy director general of the institute, put it, "The needs of the area dictate our policy" And one of these needs is people like Samira: a trained Kuwaiti able — and eager — to contribute scientific knowhow to KISR.
To provide for such needs, KISR seeks bright young men and women and sponsors them for training programs abroad; at present there are Kuwaitis working towards M.AS and Ph.D’S at American and British universities on KISR scholarships. For each year of study abroad, the scholarship recipient is expected to work one year at the institute.
Although priority in employment is given to Kuwaiti nationals, KISR’S staff is an international one: the 62 Ph.D.’s currently on the staff earned their degrees at universities in 14 countries, principally in the U.S. and Great Britain.
Their work, so far, has ranged from the exotic to the historic. In November 1978, for instance, the institute was asked to solve a rush of flying saucer sightings by army officers, policemen and oil company personnel in Kuwait. KISR agreed, launched an investigation and came up with its conclusion: the UFO’s were probably reflections of fumes from Kuwait’s oil fields.
KISR has also tried to break the secret vegetation cycle of the desert truffle — so that this expensive wild delicacy, once favored by the pharaohs, can be cultivated at the cost of ordinary mushrooms.
None of these problems may equal the theorems developed at the House of Wisdom 10 centuries ago, yet all contribute to what is clearly a revival.
Such institutes as KISR and the research center at UPM may be the highlights of Arab science in the modern world, but they — and such other organizations as SANCST and CASTARAB — are by no means the only routes by which scientific progress is spreading. Because of the sheer size of its massive five-year development programs, for example, Saudi Arabia has drawn to the kingdom many, if not most, of the largest and most advanced corporations in the industrialized world — and with them the fruits of their highly sophisticated research and development programs.
This, to be sure, is a transfer rather than a development of science, but its impact is important, nonetheless. Just as the Islamic world’s scholars had to absorb Greek learning before branching out on their own, so today its scientists and technologists must absorb whatever the industrially advanced nations have to offer before they can begin to make original contributions. In Saudi Arabia, for example, the government has recently taken steps to transfer to the kingdom highly sophisticated geoscience technology on which Saudi Arabia’s geologists and geophysicists at Aramco depend so heavily in the development of oil fields and the endless search for new reserves of petroleum.
Until recently, Aramco had relied heavily upon geoscience centers outside the kingdom— mainly in Croydon, England, and in the U. S ., where specialists were available to process the reams of data used to answer highly specialized questions concerning exploration and petroleum engineering. Now, even this gap in domestic knowhow is being bridged — at Aramco’s spanking new Exploration and Petroleum Engineering Center (EXPEC) in Dhahran.
EXPEC comes not a moment too soon. Engaged in a massive campaign to la train engineers, geoscientists, skilled craftsmen and technicians to fully operate and manage the kingdom’s hydrocarbon and petrochemical industries, It Saudi Arabia must have the technical knowhow readily available — not only on Saudi soil, but near the center of operations. EXPEC, together with the nearby University of Petroleum and Minerals and the associated Research Institute, insures it.
Connected by an underground walkway to Aramco’s existing headquarters office complex, EXPEC consists of a seven-story Exploration and Petroleum Engineering building and a three-story Computer Center, which together contain 37,533 square meters of space (404,000 square feet). Another seven-story building — the Engineering Building — is nearing completion, as is the second of two major new laboratories.
EXPEC’s vanguard project — and, in a sense, its linchpin — is the Computer Center, which came on stream in early 1982. Its brain power, for example, will consist of three of the largest computers IBM makes, the "3033," and one IBM 370-168, forerunner of the 3033. With one 3033 already installed, the center currently has the capacity to compute millions of instructions per second, a rate that will increase significantly this month when the second 3033 is installed and again in September when the third goes in.
EXPEC also contains — or will soon — state-of-the-art reservoir simulation and seismic processing technology, the latest in geologic full-color map plotters and such other high technology equipment as impact printers, laser printers and multiple electrostatic plotters. It will also feature a library of 30,000 magnetic tapes.
Already, the Computer Center is processing data collected by Aramco seismic crews working in the Rub’al-Khali (Empty Quarter) and elsewhere and the amount of data is expected to increase exponentially in coming years due to technological breakthroughs.
The Central Dhahran Laboratory II, which will be completed later this summer, will be equipped and staffed to carry out detailed analysis of crude oils, including those from recently discovered commercial reservoirs. Scientists housed within this two-story, 5,389- square meter (58,000-square foot) building will also conduct routine and sophisticated analyses of rock samples retrieved from drilling sites. From these studies, scientists can ascertain such phenomena as the relationships between pressure, volume and temperature in underground reservoirs and determine the salinity, sulfur content and grade of crude oils — crucial information to the reservoir and production engineers charged with developing Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas reserves in the most efficient way advanced technology will allow.
Space has also been set aside in the central laboratory to serve other scientific activities at Aramco — such as preventive medicine, corrosion control and metallurgy.
Eventually, a total of 2, 700 persons — operators to research Ph.D.s — will work at EXPEC and the new Engineering Building, essentially consolidating, but also enlarging, the field and office staffs, study groups and other specialists that previously were stationed in Europe, the U.S. or at other locations in Saudi Arabia.
In the case of EXPEC — and most petroleum technology — the transfer is direct and the equipment and knowhow is largely unmodified. But there are areas too in which outside technology has been altered and improved. Aware of the sometimes preposterous — and costly — consequences of importing the products of Western technology and then discovering that they are inappropriate, Arab countries are beginning to generate their own solutions to pressing problems. Indeed, the existence of Arab research centers and other scientific institutions indicates the degree to which Arab minds are focused on these issues: how best to press modern science and technology into the service of development and simultaneously generate indigenous scientific and technological activity.
One of the most visible signs of the successful adaptation of outside technology is in the fields of construction engineering and architecture. A rich Islamic tradition has produced forms still extant and still remarkable for their efficiency, economy, beauty and the extent to which they are suitable to local climatic and social conditions. Examples include the domed roof, the inner courtyard often with a fountain at its center — and the wind - catcher or wind tower, an ancient form of air conditioning. Jolted by the iriappropriate application of Western building forms to the Middle East, a handful of prominent Arab architects have founded a modern movement in Islamic architecture that, in some cases, preserves traditional forms and building techniques, and, in other cases, incorporates new technology in the construction of modern buildings based on traditional forms.
These modern Arab or Muslim architects — either educated in the West or at schools that now exist in Cairo, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Tunis, Alexandria, Khartoum, Riyadh, Dammam and Aleppo — have exhibited independent thinking and have clung to their own cultural identity.
Internationally famous Hassan Fathy of Egypt has been the most prominent and persistent voice in this movement for some 40 years. Resurrecting the time-honored traditions of domes, vaulted arches, court- yards, mud brick construction — and an approach to modern urbanism that emphasizes the Islamic principles of one- ness and unity — Fathy has influenced many other Arab architects. One, also a Muslim, is Fazlur Khan of the American architectural and design firm of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, he not only accepted Fathy’s philosophy, but applied it to the construction of buildings that are well- suited to the Middle East, but also highly dependent on Western technology.
A notable example of this is the roof design for the Hajj — or pilgrimage — terminal at the new Jiddah International Airport, in which Khan played a major role. The roof is actually a system of 210 separate, suspended tents — a modern version of the traditional desert dwelling — using a high - technology teflon-coated fiberglass fiber (see Aramco World, July-August 1981).
Commenting on the importance of a knowledge of Islamic tradition when designing modern structures, Khan said, "In 1976, I made the Hajj myself, so I have direct familiarity with this Islamic rite. In designing the terminal to receive incoming pilgrims, we wanted to create an environment similar to that at the plain of Arafat."
Khan continues, "Western technology creates a great temptation to take it without transformation which makes structures quickly irrelevant. By transformation I mean adapting Western technology to the sociological and climatic conditions of the people who will use or live in the buildings created from it. It doesn’t make sense, for example, to build all these glass boxes in the desert for a people who, over hundreds of years, have developed their own traditional forms."
This transformation of technology is in many ways the key to any scientific resurgence among the peoples of Islam, since it is only when technology is adapted by those who use it that genuine scientific activity can take root and original experimentation can flourish. And while international gatherings on the topic of science, technology and development are important, it is, in Zahlan’s words, "the collective commitment to the joy of learning and scientific discovery" that ultimately will determine the degree to which scientific work becomes possible in the Islamic East during this period of intense and rapid change.
All these examples — of research and development, of vital transfers of technology of scientific experiments in applied fields—suggest the level of science and technology in the Middle East today — and the extent of the commitment that some Muslim countries have made. As in the past, when farsighted caliphs sponsored and supported the scholars who made the Golden Age possible, enlightened leaders today are providing generous patronage of scientists — and potential scientists. Together with the recent expansion in scientific and technological research such a commitment could yet produce a resurgence in Islamic science worthy of its historic antecedents.
Additional authors Robert Fraga, Authur Clark and Martin Love
Additional photographs contributed by Tor Eigeland, Robert Azzi, M.J. Isaac, Dick Massey, John Champney, Wasim Tchorbach, Nik Wheeler, Pamela Roberson and James G. Ross.
