A FACT that should be remembered when we talk about the different areas of knowledge in Muslim heritage – and which should be emphasized in these troubled days marked by the tragic situation in the Middle East – is that until the middle of the 20th century, Palestine was an integral part of the Muslim world. The contributions of Palestinians, men and women, to Islamic civilization are so numerous that it is impossible to count and describe them briefly. For example, one of the most notable geographers of Islam was Al-Muqaddasi, the scholar originally from Al-Quds (Jerusalem) who travelled through the Islamic world in late 10th century and produced one of the most original works of Arabic geography which because of its sociological and ethnographical tone is so appealing to modern scholars. Another scholar from Palestine is Shihab Al-Din Ahmad Ibn Al-Ha'im (d. 815 H/1412 CE), a mathematician born in Cairo who spent his entire adult life in Al-Quds and was known as Ibn Al-Ha'im al-Maqdisi. He was a jurist, theologian and a teacher, but his fame resides in him being a mathematician and author of several mathematical treatises, all of them being original treatises studied by historians of science today. In his scientific work, Ibn Al-Ha'im took a special interest in a practical branch of mathematics that was of particular use to the Islamic society, successoral calculations (Hisab Al-Fara'idh). This is why he was known as Ibn Al-Ha'im Al
