Water Sterilization Technology in the History of Arabic/Islamic Sciences

It is known that contaminated water contains many bacteria and harmful viruses that cause many diseases such as typhoid, cholera, dysentery, meningitis and poliomyelitis, etc. Water-related diseases are the most critical health problems in the world now, therefore the mechanisms of sterilize water and its development gained the attention of governments and scientists. This attention makes many people believe that water sterilization technology is a modern technology. Perhaps the reason for this belief is that ancient people were not able to see those microorganisms. In this research, we have found that ancient scholars realized the existence of these objects and tried to get rid of them in several ways. Some of these ways were successful, and could be considered as a basis for modern techniques. Polluted water passes through several stages of processing to become pure clear drinkable water. In this research, we will mention a summary of each procession stage (sedimentation-filtration-sterilization), then we will refer to the history of the evolution of this stage in various ancient civilizations, and finally we will explain it in Arab civilization.