In Toby E. Huff's book, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, Huff quotes professor Noel Swerdlow:
..,[it is] not whether, but when, where, and in what form
Copernicus leaned of the Maragha theory
it was "the scientific revolution before the Renaissance"
For those of you with a true appreciation of the development of science here's more about it:
(I have added emphasis)
The "Maragha Revolution" refers to the Maragheh school's revolution against Ptolemaic astronomy. The "Maragha school" was an astronomical tradition beginning in the Maragheh observatory and continuing with astronomers from the Damascus mosque and Samarkand observatory. The Maragha astronomers attempted to solve the equant problem and produce alternative configurations to the Ptolemaic model. They were more successful than previous astronomers in producing non-Ptolemaic configurations which eliminated the equant and eccentrics, were more accurate than the Ptolemaic model in numerically predicting planetary positions, and were in better agreement with empirical observations.[5] The most important of the Maragha astronomers included Mo'ayyeduddin Urdi (d. 1266), Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (1201–1274), Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī (d. 1277), Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236–1311), Sadr al-Sharia al-Bukhari (c. 1347), Ibn al-Shatir (1304–1375), Ali Qushji (c. 1474), al-Birjandi (d. 1525), and Shams al-Din al-Khafri (d. 1550).[6]
Some have described their achievements in the 13th and 14th centuries as a "Maragha Revolution", "Maragha School Revolution", or "Scientific Revolution before the Renaissance". An important aspect of this revolution included the realization that astronomy should aim to describe the behaviour of physical bodies in mathematical language, and should not remain a mathematical hypothesis, which would only save the phenomena. The Maragha astronomers also realized that the Aristotelian view of motion in the universe being only circular or linear was not true, as the Tusi-couple showed that linear motion could also be produced by applying circular motions only.[7]
Unlike the ancient Greek and Hellenistic astronomers who were not concerned with the coherence between the mathematical and physical principles of a planetary theory, Islamic astronomers insisted on the need to match mathematics with the real world surrounding them, which gradually evolved from a reality based on Aristotelian physics to one based on an empirical and mathematical physics.[8] The Maragha Revolution was thus characterized by a shift away from the philosophical foundations of Aristotelian cosmology and Ptolemaic astronomy and towards a greater emphasis on the empirical observation and mathematization of astronomy and of nature in general, as exemplified in the works of Ibn al-Shatir, Ali Qushji, al-Birjandi and al-Khafri.[9][10]
Other achievements of the Maragha school include the first empirical observational evidence for the Earth's rotation on its axis by Tusi and Qushji,[11] the separation of natural philosophy from astronomy by Ibn al-Shatir and Qushji,[11] the rejection of the Ptolemaic model on empirical rather than philosophical grounds by Ibn al-Shatir,[5] and the development of a non-Ptolemaic model by Ibn al-Shatir that was mathematically identical to the heliocentric Copernical model...,
An area of active discussion in the Maragheh school, and later the Samarkand and Istanbul observatories, was the possibility of the Earth's rotation. Supporters of this theory included Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi (c. 1311), al-Sayyid al-Sharif al-Jurjani (1339–1413), Ali Qushji (d. 1474), and Abd al-Ali al-Birjandi (d. 1525). Tusi was the first to present empirical observational evidence of the Earth's rotation, using the location of comets relevant to the Earth as evidence, which Qushji elaborated on with further empirical observations while rejecting Aristotelian natural philosophy altogether. Both of their arguments were later described again by Nicolaus Copernicus in 1543
Examining history defeats oversimplified versions of it popularized by certain individuals, particularly those who create caricatures of religion as being based on blind faith and nothing more.
Reason and evidence were clearly in play during these contributions by Islam.
