The 6th–14th century

First to treat zero as a number and define rules for negatives.

Systematised Advaita Vedanta and reorganised Hindu monasticism.

Tang poetry's exuberant genius, memorised across East Asia.

The 'poet-historian' whose verse recorded a dynasty's collapse.

Gave the world algebra and, through his own name, the algorithm.

Founded al-Qarawiyyin in 859, the oldest continuously operating university.

Distinguished smallpox from measles and pioneered clinical case records.

Founded optics and the experimental method in the Book of Optics.

The Pillow Book invented the list-essay a millennium before the internet.

Wrote the world's first psychological novel, a thousand years ago.

Measured Earth's radius to within 1% and wrote the first comparative anthropology of India.

Wrote the medical textbook that trained Europe's doctors until 1650.

Preserved and completed Ibn Sina's corpus.

Built an astronomical clock tower with the first known escapement chain drive.

Described the magnetic compass and deduced geological deep time.

Solved cubics geometrically, reformed the calendar, wrote the Rubaiyat.

Reoriented Islamic thought toward inwardness and challenged the philosophers on their own ground.

Abbess, composer, and author of the first known European medical texts by a woman.

His Aristotle commentaries restarted European philosophy.

Guide for the Perplexed reconciled reason and revelation for Judaism.

Tusi couple; his planetary models likely reached Copernicus.

Sufi poet whose Masnavi is among the best-selling poetry on Earth today.

Fused Aristotle with Christianity; natural-law theory still shapes law and ethics.

Made a dialect into a nation's language and mapped the moral universe.

Travelled some 120,000 km across the medieval world and wrote the Rihla.

Persia's beloved lyric poet; his divan is still consulted as an oracle.

Founded sociology and economic history with the Muqaddimah.

Made English a literary language with The Canterbury Tales.

Sultan-astronomer whose star catalogue stood unmatched for two centuries.

Commissioned Hangul, the alphabet that made Korea literate.

Industrialised the word and detonated the modern world.