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IslamicScienceIslamicScience was a historical educational and publishing project of ASK-Solutions. It grew out of the guidance work carried out in collaboration with Stichting Witte Tulp, where knowledge, history, science, language, technology and culture were used to strengthen confidence, broaden self-image and make learning more meaningful.
The project focused on the history of science, technology, mathematics, architecture, manuscripts and knowledge traditions in Islamic civilisation. Its purpose was educational: to show how science, engineering, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, geography, craftsmanship and written culture developed within Arabic, Persian, Turkish and wider Islamic contexts.
IslamicScience came directly from the educational and social work connected to Stichting Witte Tulp. In that work, children and young people were not approached only through school results or missing knowledge. The aim was to open a wider view: where knowledge comes from, how science and technology develop, how language and culture carry history, and how a person’s background can become a source of curiosity rather than shame or distance.
That approach made the history of science in Islamic civilisation especially useful. Many children had heard simplified or negative ideas about their family background, migration history or place in western society. Showing them examples of mathematics, architecture, medicine, astronomy, engineering, literature and craft from Islamic and surrounding cultures helped change the frame. Knowledge was no longer something that only belonged elsewhere. It became something with a wider human history, including histories connected to them.
This closely matched Hüseyin’s growing interest in the history of science and knowledge in the Arab and Islamic world. He brought stories, books, images and examples of mosques, manuscripts, geometric patterns, scientific instruments and architectural forms from places including Iran and Turkey. Within the educational work, this material was used to make abstract subjects visible and recognisable: mathematics was not only a school exercise, but could also be found in walls, ceilings, manuscripts, instruments, maps and buildings.
Hüseyin later continued to specialise academically in the history of Arab and Islamic science and technology. In 2024, he completed his doctorate at Utrecht University. He now works as a specialist in historical maps and scientific instruments.
A recurring theme was the connection between mathematics, visual form and built space. Islamic architecture and manuscript culture offered many concrete examples: tessellations, geometric borders around texts, full-page ornamental structures, star patterns, polygons, arcs and repeated constructions based on precise relationships between points and lines.
These examples helped make mathematics tangible. A pentagon, a line, an arc or an intersection was not only a classroom abstraction. It could become part of a pattern, a manuscript page, an architectural surface or a larger spatial structure. In buildings, complex nested forms and dome-like structures showed how geometry, craft and engineering could come together in ways that were both beautiful and technically demanding.
The project used such examples to connect curiosity with learning. A child who might resist mathematics as schoolwork could still become interested when the same mathematics appeared in a mosque ceiling, an instrument, a manuscript border, a map or a historical machine. That fitted the wider ASK-Solutions approach: knowledge becomes easier to approach when it can be seen, touched, explained and connected to real examples.
Hüseyin set up the IslamicScience website and filled it with information he had collected about science, architecture, manuscripts and related knowledge traditions. The site gathered educational material, references, images and explanations in a form that could be shared beyond a single classroom or guidance setting.
The website ran on Synergos. That connection matters because IslamicScience was not only a content project; it was also part of the publishing history that helped shape Synergos. The need to publish structured information, present images, organise material and make knowledge accessible online fitted directly with the development of a more interactive publishing system.
IslamicScience therefore belongs to two projects at once. It was an educational science-history project, and it was also one of the practical contexts in which ASK-Solutions explored how publishing systems could support real public-benefit work.
Synergos developed partly around the need to publish and maintain more complex material than simple static pages. IslamicScience was one of the projects that made this need visible. It involved text, images, references, historical context and educational structure. That required more than a single page or a hand-maintained list of links.
The wider Synergos direction also included the idea of connecting publication with practical exchange. At the time, presenting knowledge, creative work, catalogue information or educational material online often meant first publishing clear information and then continuing contact through email, phone, fax or a physical visit. Synergos tried to bring structured publishing, editing, images, products, ordering and later payment handling into one web-administered system.
IslamicScience shows the educational side of that same publishing problem. It was about making knowledge visible, navigable and reusable. The project helped show why ASK-Solutions kept investing in publishing systems: the website was not only a display surface, but a way to organise and share knowledge.
IslamicScience fits the early ASK-Solutions history because it brings together several founding concerns: shared knowledge, education, cultural confidence, technical publication, free software and the ethical question of who gets to see themselves as part of science and technology.
The project continued the same approach that was visible in the Witte Tulp guidance work. Learning was not treated as simply adding more hours or more exercises. It was also about changing the relationship someone has with knowledge. When history, science, language, architecture and technology are presented as part of a wider human inheritance, learning can become less defensive and more inviting.
IslamicScience is a historical project. It is no longer maintained as a current ASK-Solutions project, but remains important as part of the educational and publishing history of ASK-Solutions. The project connected shared knowledge with history, culture, confidence, science communication and public access to knowledge.
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