This beautiful Persian miniature painting comes from a book of science illustrating a Tooth. Beginning in ancient times Persia has been a center of scientific achievement and was often the conduit of knowledge from China and India in the East to Greece and Rome in the West. Persian-speaking scholars have been active in furthering knowledge in fields of science and technology, such as astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, biology, botany, cosmology, mathematics, engineering, and architecture. One of the main roles played by medieval Iranian scholars in the scientific field was the conservation, consolidation, coordination, and development of ideas and knowledge in ancient civilizations. Some Iranian Hakim (practitioners) such as Muhammad ibn Zakariya ar-Razi, known to the West as Rhazes, and Ibn Sina, better known as Avicenna, were also responsible for accumulating all the existing information on medicine of the time.