Ibn Firnas: the First Man to Fly

Since the colonial era, the culture of curiosity, inquiry and adventure is associated with people of white races or with those who are westernized by education or training. Investigation and experimentation are considered Western traits because in the previous three centuries,  it is the western or a westernized minds that sought logical basis for a natural phenomenon, whereas an Eastern or an African mind tended to assign supernatural or spiritual reasons.

Adventure and inquiry, however, is not affiliated to a particular society. It is a trait of all living and progressive societies. We can trace this rational attribute to the people of, among others, Pharaonic Egypt, Sumer-Akkad Mesopotamia, Greeco-Roman Mediterranean Europe, Shang China and  Indus Valley culture -all societies that were ‘alive’ in their own time. Another society that witnessed a burst of great scholarship, enterprise and exploration was the society represented by the Islamic Golden Age in the interval from the 9th to the 16th century in the erstwhile Greater Khorasan and Muslim Spain. This article recounts the story of Abbas ibn Firnas, an adventurous person who lived in Muslim Spain at the height of its glory.

Ibn Firnas (810-887 AD) was born of Berber descent in Andalusia. By then, the Islamic conquest of Spain was a hundred years old. In 750 AD, when  the Muslim Spain borders had stabilized below the northern and northwestern mountains, Umayyad prince Amir Abdur Rehman-1 created the Emirate of Cordoba and brought unity to the fragmented peninsula. The Amir was an energetic and enlightened ruler who unleashed a series of reforms including establishment of schools, hospitals, roads, a standing army, an independent judiciary and civil bureaucracy. He constructed many magnificent buildings including the famed Mosque of Cordoba. He treated the Christians and Jews with leniency. His progressive rule created a conducive environment for flowering of scholarship that continued to grow during the long reign of his dynasty: as an Emirate till 929 and then as Caliphate till 1031.

Muslim Spain created many luminaries in the fields of philosophy, history, literature, science, medicine and technology including one named Abbas ibn Firnas, who was one of the brightest stars of that era.

Attaching the contraption to his body, he flung himself down in the air from an overhang located at a hill near Cordoba

Ibn Firnas was a polymath who excelled in many fields. He made contributions in the field of astronomy and engineering. He constructed a device consisting of a chain of rings that simulated the motion of stars and planets. In 1976, International Union of Astronomy recognized this invention by naming an 89 km wide impact crater on the far side of the moon in his honour as ‘Ibn Firnas crater’. He invented a method for manufacturing colourless glass and is believed to be the creator of the Andalusian design of tumblers. He made magnifying lenses for reading called ‘reading stones’. He devised a method for facet-cutting rock crystal that allowed Spain to shape quartz locally instead of exporting to Egyptians who were the only ones till then to practice this technique. His land of birth continues to honour him to this day. The Ibn-Firnas bridge over the Guadalquivir river near Cordoba is named after him.



However, the greatest achievement for which he is most well known today is the creation of a gliding device in which he took to air, thus becoming the first recorded instance of a human being to take off, fly and land (though roughly).

The sight of birds in effortless flight has always enchanted the mankind. If man could take to water like fish, then why not to air like the birds? In the spirit of the age, and with his keen technical mind, Ibn Firnas sought to experiment it himself. The narrative of his flight has come down to us through two different sources, establishing its authenticity. It is possible that some extinct script also described the details about his craft and the preparations preceding the flight but the available information in this regard is scanty and sketchy.

The 17th-century Algerian historian Ahmed Muhammad al-Muqqari, relying on earlier works, notes that among the many curious experiments that Ibn Firnas carried out was his flight. Ibn Firnas created a wooden structure of wings and covered it with feathers. Attaching the contraption to his body, he flung himself down in the air from a overhang located in a hill near Cordoba. Al-Maqqari noted that the event was witnessed by several persons who recorded it in writing. According to these accounts, ibn-Firnas flew over air currents for between two and ten minutes covering a considerable distance. He survived the flight but made a hard landing on his feet and was severely hurt. Al-Maqqari theorized that birds alight down using their tail but ibn-Firnas did not build one in his devise. More likely, the maiden flyer was not cognizant of laws of aerodynamics.

A contemporary court poet of Cordoba, Mu’min ibn Said, who was critical of ibn-Firnas, wrote of ibn-Firnas in a poem that “He flew faster than a phoenix in his flight when he dressed his body in the feathers of a vulture.”

A contemporary court poet of Cordoba, Mu’min ibn Said, who was critical of ibn-Firnas, wrote of ibn-Firnas in a poem that “He flew faster than a phoenix in his flight when he dressed his body in the feathers of a vulture.”

Lynn Townsend White, Jr.(1907-87), an American professor of history recognized for his work in histories of medieval technologies, concludes that based on the available evidence, Ibn-Firnas was the first man to fly. Many other Western researches also acknowledge him as the first person to fly. Among the many monuments honoring his maiden flight, is a large statue of this genius standing near the Baghdad Airport in the middle of Ibn-Firnas square.

A number of Muslim scholars of Khorasan and Andalusia during the Islamic Golden Age for their scientific and literary achievements. Ibn-Firnas too is remembered and honoured for his pioneering spirit. Yet, it is regrettable that their experimentation mostly failed to inspire their compatriots or to ignite the imagination of their peers to carry forward their work. There are many examples of this failure and only a few will be enumerated here. Ibn-Batuta was an explorer who travelled from Morocco to Egypt and then all the way to China through Arabia, Iran, India and Sri Lanka. He wrote his elaborate travelogue but we find no one else treading across these paths again. A moon crater and an asteroid carry the name of Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965-1040) for his pioneering work in the nature of light and he is called the ‘father of optics’. Yet, we find no other optician in his time or immediately after him carrying forward his work. Al-Sijzi of modern southern Afghanistan (d.1020) became aware of Earth’s rotation on its axis yet, did not pursue the idea with mathematical expertise that was available in abundance at his time; nor any of his students or followers did that either. Al-Biruni calculated the radius of the earth but no one else caught up with the idea to do further studies in geo-metrics. In short, the excellence of scholarship in that era remained individual trait and not a societal trend.

The pioneering spirit, the adventurous soul and the investigative quest existed in the Islamic Golden Age but perhaps only in isolated individuals without any mechanism for continuity. And possibly, one reason for this failure could have been the difficulty of reproducing books and written literature in large quantities for wider circulation. The European renaissance, on the other hand, was accelerated by the invention of the printing press right in the middle of the 15th century.

The stories of the luminous Muslim past, however, need to be recounted to inform the youth that perusal of sciences and humanities is not a gift of the Western civilization but was equally valued in the Age of Muslim glory and we need to carry forward this quest

Parvez Mahmood retired as a Group Captain from PAF and is now a software engineer. He lives in Islamabad and writes on social and historical issues. He can be reached at parvezmahmood53@gmail.com