Aviation History

Parachutes and gliders in Umayyad Iberia and England

Minaret of the Great Mosque at Córdoba. In 852, Ibn Firnas is said to have jumped off the top in a parachute-like apparatus, and survived with minor injuries.

Islamic Iberia during the Umayyad renaissance under the Caliphate of Cordoba witnessed several attempts at flight by the Arab polymath and inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas,[10] supported by the Emir Abd ar-Rahman II. In 852 he made a set of wings with cloth stiffened by wooden struts. With this umbrella-like apparatus, Ibn Firnas jumped off the minaret of the Grand Mosque in Cordoba—while he could not fly, his apparatus slowed his fall, and he escaped with minor injuries. His device is now considered to have been a prototype of the modern parachute.

Twenty-five years later, at the age of 65, Ibn Firnas is said to have flown from the hill Jabal al-'arus by employing a rudimentary glider. While "alighting again on the place whence he had started," he eventually crashed and sustained injury which some contemporary critics attributed to a lack of tail.[11][12] His flight may have been an inspiration for Eilmer of Malmesbury, more than a century later, who would fly for about 200 meters using a similar glider