LAHORE, Nov 5: American scholar Prof George Saliba says the foundation of computer, which is based on the binary system, was invented by Muslims. Delivering a lecture on “problems of historiography of Islamic science” at the Government College University, Prof Saliba said the use of decimal fractions was not a western invention, and challenged that it was purely a discovery of Muslim scientists.

Prof Saliba gave a critique of the standard classical accounts of the rise of Islamic science by detailing problems and explained alternative historiography that described comprehensively the rise of an Islamic scientific tradition as a result of social and political conditions within the nascent Islamic empire that also guaranteed the support for such a tradition.—Staff Reporter