1010 – 1020s

Events in the 1010s 2

• 1010 Ferdowsi completes the Shahnameh The Persian national epic preserves the language Around 1010 the poet Ferdowsi completed the Shahnameh ("Book of Kings"), a 50,000-couplet epic recounting the myths and history of Persia from creation to the Arab conquest. Written in nearly pure Persian, it is credited with preserving the Persian language and identity through centuries of foreign rule.
• 1011 – 1021 Ibn al-Haytham — Book of Optics Light travels to the eye, not from it — the birth of experimental science Between 1011 and 1021, while under house arrest in Cairo, the Iraqi scholar Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) wrote his seven-volume Kitab al-Manazir (Book of Optics). He proved by experiment that vision occurs because light reflects from objects into the eye — overturning a thousand-year-old belief that the eye emits light. He described accurately the anatomy of the eye, explained refraction, and invented the camera obscura. His rigorous experimental method was centuries ahead of its time and directly influenced Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, and later Kepler and Descartes.