Up to 300 media representatives from 50 countries gather in Tashkent and Samarkand today for the start of the International Media Forum “Islamic Civilization: New Look – New Discoveries,” organized by the Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan.
The Forum brings together global media, cinema, publishing, science and digital technology to present Islamic civilization’s contribution to human progress to international audiences in new and compelling ways – through the works of great scientists and thinkers, ancient manuscripts, unique artifacts, documentary films, publishing projects and artificial intelligence. Its aim is to make this heritage understood and valued by audiences worldwide.
The initiative builds on a proposal by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev at the UN General Assembly in 2017, to present Islam as a religion of peace, knowledge and tolerance. At a time when global media increasingly shape how societies understand one another, that idea carries particular international weight. The Forum sets out to show that the achievements of Islamic civilization – from Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Fergani and Ibn Sina [emphasis mine] to the intellectual and cultural legacy of the Timurid and Baburid eras – belong not to one region or religion alone, but to the shared heritage of humanity.
Participants include heads and representatives of 26 television and radio companies, 24 international publications, 14 newspapers, and five international media associations. CNN and Euronews are the Forum’s general media partners.
The programme combines plenary sessions and professional discussions, documentary screenings, presentations of international media and publishing projects, and meetings between journalists, directors, producers and publishers, alongside the signing of cooperation agreements. A central question running through the sessions is how to tell the story of historical and spiritual heritage in today’s language – through documentary filmmaking, television, publishing, museum technology, artificial intelligence, digital avatars and immersive formats.
Delegates will view the Center’s manuscript and artifact collections firsthand, record interviews, and identify subjects for future documentaries, books and digital projects. The programme also includes a visit to Samarkand – among other sites, the Imam al-Bukhari Memorial Complex and UNESCO World Heritage landmarks – timed alongside events marking the 35th anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence.
Beyond showcasing existing work, the Forum is designed as a launchpad for new international partnerships – joint films, television programmes, books and digital media projects.
“The International Media Forum continues the initiative of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, voiced at the UN General Assembly in 2017, to reveal to the world the true humanistic essence of Islam – grounded in knowledge, enlightenment, peace and tolerance,” said Dr. Firdavs Abdukhalikov, Director General of the Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan. “At the initiative of the head of state, extensive work is under way to study and preserve the legacy of great scientists and thinkers. Today, it is essential to tell that story in a modern language – through world media, cinema, books, digital technology and artificial intelligence. This is how the President’s vision translates into concrete international media projects reaching millions of people worldwide.”
The Forum marks a new stage in the Center’s long-term strategy: from informing the world about Uzbekistan to co-creating international content that reveals the country’s historical, scientific and cultural heritage through contemporary media.
A growing global network
The Center’s materials and projects have reached media in 65 countries, including 246 news items and sponsored features, seven full-length co-produced documentaries, 27 video projects, 23 television stories and more than 60 books.
The Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan initiates and sponsors a number of international media partnership projects aimed at promoting Uzbekistan’s cultural, historical and intellectual heritage on the global stage. With the Center’s sponsorship, Euronews and CNN have produced more than 25 television and digital features on its history, architecture and collections, and on the return of cultural treasures to Uzbekistan – reaching a combined television audience of over 400 million viewers. Further documentary and special projects have been produced with TRT World and TRT Avaz, while sponsored coverage of Uzbekistan’s cultural heritage has appeared on the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic. Cooperation with Al Jazeera Media Network is currently under discussion.
Among the Center’s flagship projects is the documentary series Echo of Enlightenment, featuring Academy Award winner Sir Ben Kingsley, which traces the legacy of Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Fergani, Ibn Sina and other Central Asian scientists [emphases mine] alongside the cultural achievements of the Timurid and Baburid eras. Broadcast on the BBC, CNN and Euronews, the series has reached a combined audience of more than 418 million viewers, and one instalment, Whispers of Wisdom, has won international recognition including the official SILKFEST 26 award in Belgrade and the Terres Travel Festival in Tortosa, Catalonia.
The Tashkent and Samarkand Forum builds directly on this record – moving from individual media projects toward systematic cooperation with the world’s leading newsrooms, broadcasters, directors, producers and publishers, and the joint creation of new global media content on Islamic civilization.
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About the Center for Islamic Civilization in Uzbekistan
Opened in March 2026, the Center for Islamic Civilization is located on the historical site of Shash, in the heart of Tashkent, next to the spiritual center of the capital, the Hazrati Imam complex. The three-story building measures 145 by 115 meters, and its central dome rises 65 meters.
The Center’s exposition is based on the Uthman Quran, one of the oldest surviving handwritten copies of the Quran in the world. The manuscript is included in the UNESCO Memory of the World program, dedicated to the preservation and promotion of documentary heritage of world importance.
The area of the main museum exposition is about 15,000 square meters; In addition, the complex includes a research center, digitization laboratories, as well as conservation and restoration workshops. Visitors will be able to see rare artifacts of different historical periods, returned from abroad, including those purchased at international auctions and from private collectors at the initiative of the President of Uzbekistan. The exposition also presents collections of museums from around the world and the World Society for the Study, Preservation and Promotion of the Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan (WOSCU). Interactive exhibitions tell about the outstanding achievements of the Islamic Golden Age in the fields of algebra, astronomy and medicine.
Even before the official opening, the Center received wide international recognition. In 2026, it was named one of the most beautiful museums in the world by the Prix Versailles, included by Smithsonian Magazine and BBC Travel in the list of the most anticipated new museums of the year, and also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest museum dedicated to Islamic civilization.
A December 29, 2025 news item (partner content: Tourism Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan) on Euro News highlights some of “Echo of Enlightenment’s|” science content, Note: All emphases are mine,
A new cultural project from Uzbekistan is challenging how the history of science is usually told. Known as Echo of Enlightenment, the initiative places Central Asian scholars back into a global narrative that often begins in Europe and skips several centuries of intellectual exchange along the way.
Led by the Center for Islamic Civilization in Tashkent, the project is part of a broader effort to present Uzbekistan not only as a historical crossroads, but as a birthplace of global ideas that continue to shape modern life – from algebra and astronomy to medicine and cartography.
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At the centre of the project is a 10-part documentary series, each episode dedicated to a scholar or cultural figure from the Islamic Golden Age with connections to the territory of present-day Uzbekistan. The films combine dramatic reenactment, expert commentary, historical research and modern animation to explain complex ideas and bring the stories to life.
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Among the featured figures are Muhammad al-Khwarizmi, whose work laid the foundations for algebra and algorithms; Ahmad al-Fergani, whose astronomical calculations later influenced explorers like Columbus; and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, a polymath and early pioneer of fields such as geography and anthropology.
Another episode focuses on Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, whose Canon of Medicine remained a standard university text well into the early modern period.
The series also devotes significant attention to the Timurid era, often described by historians as Central Asia’s “Second Renaissance”. Viewers are introduced to figures such as Amir Timur, the first Timurid ruler who turned Samarkand into a centre of learning; Mirzo Ulugbek, the 15th-century astronomer whose calculations of the Earth’s year were among the most accurate of his time; and Ali Kushchi, who helped spread astronomical knowledge westward.
Cultural life is not neglected. Episodes on Alisher Navoi, Kamoliddin Behzad and Zahiriddin Muhammad Babur explore how literature, miniature painting and political leadership developed alongside scientific inquiry, reinforcing the idea that knowledge systems rarely exist in a vacuum.
One of the most visually striking instalments recreates Ulugbek’s 15th-century observatory and astronomy school in Samarkand, highlighting their influential role as beacons for scientific inquiry.
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In doing so, Echo of Enlightenment makes a broader argument: that modern science emerged through centuries of cross-cultural exchange, not in isolation. For European audiences, the series offers a reminder that ideas long taught in Western universities often have roots further east.
Rather than nostalgia, the project presents continuity – a case for seeing Islamic civilization not as a closed chapter, but as an active contributor to the shared intellectual history of today’s world.
The Center for Islamic Civilization (CISC) in Uzbekhistan was previewed in a December 5, 2025 article by Rebecca Cairns for CNN (also a CISC partner), Note: Links have been removed,
Four times taller than the Hollywood sign and around seven times larger than the White House, Uzbekistan’s newest cultural center is a monument of epic proportions.
Part museum, part academic research facility, the three-story Center for Islamic Civilization (CISC) in Tashkent will be open to the public in March 2026, and is intended to celebrate and revive Uzbekistan’s historical role as a center of Islamic scholarship.
“This region has been home to many ancestors who influenced world civilization,” said Firdavs Abdukhalikov, director of CISC. “The big question was how to present their influence to the world, to younger generations, in an engaging and modern way.”
Over the past eight years, while the building was under construction, CISC engaged 1,500 specialists from more than 40 countries to help develop the center’s scientific, architectural and cultural elements.
For example, through an “interactive educational zone” that leverages virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence technologies for exhibits such as conversations with “living portraits” of historical scholars and thinkers, the center hopes to inspire children to explore astronomy, medicine, literature and art.
The second floor will be dedicated to research, where international academics can access more than 200,000 books in its library.
“It’s not just a museum — it’s a cultural and educational platform. Here, we don’t only engage with artifacts, but also with the lives and ideas of influential figures,” Abdukhalikov added.
Reviving the past
While Uzbekistan is a secular nation, Islam is a key part of its history and cultural identity.
Arab conquests brought Islam to Central Asia in the 7th century, replacing earlier Zoroastrian and Buddhist traditions, and between the 9th and 12th centuries, the region experienced a golden age of science, literature, and architecture.
Medieval Uzbekistan, and the wider Central Asian region, was “a globalized world before globalization,” said historian Farhan Ahmad Nizami, founding director of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, who’s not connected to the CISC.
Uzbek cities like Bukhara and Samarkand were important stops on the Silk Road, a cross-continental trade route that stretched from Venice to Xi’an for 1,500 years (130 BCE to 1453 CE), and became a confluence of culture and ideas from both the East and West.
“(Uzbekistan’s) contribution in science and arts is obvious, and now people are rediscovering it, although it had not received sufficient attention,” Nizami added.
Later, in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Timurid Empire would see a second renaissance of art, science, and diplomacy, with Samarkand at its center, an era that the CISC’s architecture draws inspiration from with its grand, mosaic-covered archways, blue tile-covered domes and intricate ornamentation.
The building, designed by Abdukakhkhor Turdiev, draws inspiration from classical Islamic architecture of Central Asia, particularly the Timurid era.CNN
In the 19th century, Russian expansion saw many parts of Central Asia incorporated into the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, which imposed secular rule and suppressed Islamic practices.
“A significant portion of our cultural treasures left the country during the Soviet times,” says Abdukhalikov.
It wasn’t until 1991 that Uzbekistan regained independence and began reviving its Islamic heritage and cultural identity. To this end, CISC was given a directive to recover its historic items.
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There are criticisms of the center, relating to its cost, the sources of its funding, and the limited religious freedom in the country.
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Cairns’s December 5, 2025 article includes more information and many more embedded images of the stunning CISC.
I have three relatively recent stories about the influence Middle Eastern scientists have had on European science,
An April 22, 2025 posting: “Arabic manuscript containing lost works of Apollonius discussed in new book about Middle Eastern science (etc.) scholarship” about a hidden debt to Arabic and Muslim scientists such as Ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini
A July 9, 2025 posting: “Copernicus’ cosmological model strongly influenced by ancient Muslim astronomer Ibn al-Shatir?”
A July 24, 2024 posting: “11th century Arab-Muslim optical scientist laid groundwork for modern-day physics,” scientist al-Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham known in Latin as “Alhazen”
Going back further,
A November 9, 2015 posting: “Science in Muslim universities report, a science and Islam exhibit, and a debate about science and Islam”
The exhibit, “1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World” is also an organization called 1001 Inventions and it has a website. It seems that long ago exhibit was the first in a series of 1001 Inventions programmes. Here’s more from the organization’s About 1001 Inventions page, Note: A link has been removed,
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1001 Inventions is a UK based not-for-profit science and cultural heritage organisation co-founded in 2006 by award-winning British producer, philanthropist and social entrepreneur Ahmed Salim.
1001 Inventions creates and delivers global educational initiatives aiming to spark young people’s interest in science while promoting diversity and inclusion.
Through a network of strategic partners, 1001 Inventions has engaged and educated more than 500 million people globally through world-class transmedia productions including interactive exhibits, films, immersive live shows, hands-on workshops, digital content, books and learning material.
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About 1001 Inventions
1001 Inventions is an award-winning international science and cultural heritage organisation that raises awareness of the creative golden age of Arabic Science.
From the 7th century onwards, men and women of different faiths and cultures built on knowledge from ancient civilisations making breakthroughs that have left their mark on our world.
Join us on a journey to the past to inspire a better future!
This really is a reminder that science is a collaborative endeavour (with many influences such as literature, poetry, architecture, etc.) and that knowledge flows back and forth amongst many peoples as it is enriched by that collaboration.
This February 4, 2025 news item is essentially a book announcement but what makes it exceptionally interesting is how one of history’s great mathematicians had some of his work preserved in an Arabic manuscript, Note: Links have been removed,
Scientists say that the two lost, but extremely important books by Apollonius, the Greek mathematician known to the ancient world as “The Great Geometer,” have survived in an Arabic manuscript kept under lock and key as part of the prized possessions of the Leiden University Libraries in Holland.
The revelation is made in a new volume of 50 chapters titled “Prophets, Poets and Scholars” and published recently by Leiden University Press.
Apollonius (262 BC–190 BC) is believed to be one of Greece’s greatest mathematicians and is renowned for his hugely influential book, “The Conics of Apollonius” in which he introduces the terms hyperbola, ellipse, and parabola.
According to the volume, “The Conics of Apollonius (c. 2.00 BCE) was one of the most profound works of ancient Greek mathematics. The work deals with the theory of ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas – the curves which you can see if you shine a flashlight on a wall.” Apollonius’s work comprises eight books, but only the first four were available to European scholars during the Renaissance.
The lost books – 5 and 7 – were brought to the Leiden University by the famous Dutch orientalist and mathematician Jacob Golius who had bought them for the university as part of a collection of nearly 200 manuscripts during his various voyages to the Middle East.
The 50 chapters in the book touch on the history of the Netherlands’ relationships with the orient, particularly the Middle East and North Africa, emphasizing that the first encounters with Arabic manuscripts occurred in the early 17th century.
The 17th century saw the first Dutchman, Thomas Erpenius, gaining pre-eminence in oriental studies. “He concentrated on Arabic text editions, primers for students and most importantly an Arabic grammar that would remain in use as a standard work for more than two centuries,” the volume’s editors write in their introductory chapter.
But the first Dutch “to have ever set foot in the Middle east or North Africa was … Jacobus Golius (1596-1667). On his travels he bought more than 200 Middle Eastern manuscripts for Leiden University,” say the editors. However, “Golius’s fame rests mainly on his lexicon Arabian-Latinum, a large folio volume printed by the then firm of Elzevier in 1653. The work is based on the Arabic lexicographical manuscripts that he had acquired on his travels.”
It is the manuscripts which Golius purchased for the Leiden University Libraries that attract the attention of numerous scholars who have contributed to the volume. For instance, a chapter focuses on an 11th century Arabic manuscript, which is a translation of the lost mathematical works attributed to Apollonius. In the meantime, the essay dwells on four other Arabic manuscripts bought by Golius to present some aspects of the scientific traditions prevalent in the heyday of Arab and Muslims civilization.
The Arabic translation of Apollonius is fascinating, Dutch mathematician and historian of science, Jan Pieter Hogendijk, says in an email interview, adding that besides its exact science, it is adorned with colored images and written in skillful Arabic calligraphy. “The calligraphy in some of these manuscripts is wonderful and also the geometrical figures were written with extreme care.
“They (manuscripts) are a witness of the mental abilities, discipline, power of concentration, will power and so on which the scientists and also the scribes possessed, and which modern people, spoiled by their gadgets, mobile phones, and so on, do not possess anymore.”
The volume, according to the editors, “serves as an introduction to more than fifty contributions of scholars and librarians who are intimately familiar with diverse aspects of the collections (of Leiden University Libraries), both ancient and modern.”
The volume is a nice read as it is written for the public. It is luxuriously illustrated with ancient maps, images, and extracts from Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts. Besides accounts and analyses of scientific traditions prevalent among Arabs and Muslims in the Middle Ages, the volume narrates some fantasy tales from Arabic travel literature, which still captivate the mind.
In their studies and analyses, the scientists find that their authors would often add an entertaining touch mingled with fantasy to their narrative. “They (the texts) were often mixed with legendary accounts, especially in reports about the outer edges of the known world, where the laws of nature were no longer fixed and strange things might occur.
“There women might grow on trees, people might have arms where we have our ears, and might come across islands exclusively inhabited either by women or by men. All this has left its traces in the Middle Eastern written heritage, and also in the accompanying pictorial tradition.”
In the section dedicated to Arabic manuscripts and titled “The Great Arabic Heritage,” there is emphasis on cosmography besides astronomy, mathematics, zoology, botany, planetology, among other sciences.
There is emphasis on a renowned Muslim cosmographer Ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini’s “Ajaib al-Makhluqat wa Khraib al-Mawjudat (Wonders of Creations and Rarities of Extant Beings), an encyclopedic work which, according to the volume tackles “the humble creatures such as fleas, worms and lice to exotic animals surrounded by mystery and legends.”
Some creatures can be merely fantasy beings like the turtle which “sailors moored their ship on it, taking the motionless animal that had become overgrown with vegetation for an island” – reminiscent of the creatures one comes across in the famous Travels of Sindbad the Sailor.
However, as one of the fascinating chapters in the volume underscores, “sometimes one has to rid oneself of preconceived ideas to understand the descriptions. Such a case is a sea creature described by Qazwini, … its face is like that of man, it has a white beard, its body looks like that of a frog, its hair is like a cow’s and its size like that of a calf. It takes us a moment to see that this is a perfectly adequate description of some kind of seal.”
Mostafa Zahri, University of Sharjah Professor of numerical analysis and mathematical modeling, says the prized possessions of “Arabic manuscripts in Western libraries like Leiden University Libraries serve as invaluable records of Islamic civilization’s intellectual achievements, especially in mathematics and geometry.
“Western institutions, besides Leiden University, namely the British Library, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, house thousands of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman manuscripts containing rare geometric treatises. These collections bridge historical and modern scholarships.”
However, and despite the wealth of knowledge they hold, many manuscripts remain understudied and only greater collaboration, digitization, and accessibility between Western and Arab scholars could unlock their full historical and mathematical value, says Prof. Zahri.
In an email interview, Wilfred de Graaf, Education Coordinator at Utrecht University concurs, emphasizing that only a small portion of collections of Arabic and Islamic manuscript texts have been studied. He attributes the scarcity of studies in this sphere to the lack of scholars in the West who are fluent in oriental language like Arabic, Persian and Turkish, in which most Islamic manuscripts are written.
Nonetheless, he adds that more and more ancient texts are unraveled assisting scholars to obtain “a general view of the development of science in the Islamic tradition. “In the West, there is an interest in the Islamic scientific tradition, not only because of it being crucial for the development of science in Europe between the 11th and 14th century, but also because of the intrinsic nature of its contributions.”
Mesut Idriz, Sharjah University’s Professor of Islamic civilization, says bringing Arabic and Islamic manuscripts to life is among the hardest labors social science researchers face. “Islamic manuscript studies require a nuanced understanding of both the textual and scientific traditions they encapsulate.
“The study of Islamic manuscripts demands specialized knowledge, encompassing paleography, historical context, linguistic expertise, and scientific specialization—areas that are often underdeveloped among contemporary researchers and academics.”
Drawing on Leiden University Libraries’ Arabic manuscripts, a team of Western scientists held a workshop at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in January 2025 to teach participants the method by which Arab and Muslim scientists wrote numbers in a numeral system called abjad, in reference to the Arabic alphabet, a right-to-left script.
The abjad is a numeral system in which the first of the 28-letter Arabic alphabet ‘alif’ represents 1, and the second letter ‘baa’ is 2 up to 9. The other letters stand for nine intervals of 10s and then those of 100s ending with 1000.
“The scientists in the Islamic tradition used abjad in combination with the sexagesimal system which is still used today for time (hours, minutes and seconds) and angles (degrees, arc minutes and arc seconds),” Wilfred, who organized the workshop, said.
This is the second workshop in nearly two months Western scientists hold [sic] at the University of Sharjah to present Arabic manuscripts to the Arab academic community and demonstrate the uses Arab and Muslim scientific instruments were put to in the Middle Ages. In them, the participants were made to read in detail the abjad numbers on an early astrolabe, an Arabic astronomical instrument.
Besides the Arabic manuscript in which the two lost works of Apollonius were found, there are extracts and studies in the volume tackling a variety of scientific traditions prevalent among the Arabs in the Middle Ages.
One chapter analyzes a figure from an 11th century manuscript attributed to al-Mu’taman ibn Hud, King of Saragossa between 1081 and 1085. The chapter shows how Muslim scientists managed to solve an ancient Greek geometry puzzle nearly half a millennium before a solution to the same problem was found in Europe. Muslim scientists’ solution of the puzzle, according to the chapter, “is part of a huge mathematical encyclopedia called the Book of Perfections of which a small fragment has been preserved.”
Quoting from yet another 14th century Arabic manuscript, the chapter shows how Muslim scientists could determine the geographical coordinates of no less than 160 cities with a high degree of accuracy and minimum error margin.
“The names of the cities appear in black and the numbers in red are the longitudes in degrees and minutes, and the latitude in degrees and minutes,” says Prof. Hogendijk. “The numbers are written in the alphabetical abjad system used by most astronomers, in which a numerical value is attributed to each letter. The first column begins with localities in the two provinces of Western and Eastern Azerbaijan in modern Iran.”
The book, “Prophets, Poets and Scholars; The Collections of the Middle Eastern Library of Leiden University” Editor: Arnoud Vrolijk, Kasper van Ommen, Karin Scheper & Tijmen Baarda, can be found on its Leiden University Press publication order page.
