House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization by Jonathan Lyons

From the Publisher

The remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy—and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West.

For centuries following the fall of Rome, western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse of the scientific advances coming from Baghdad, Antioch, or the cities of Persia, Central Asia, and Muslim Spain. T here, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge and revitalizing the works of Plato and Aristotle. I n the royal library of Baghdad, known as the House of Wisdom, an army of scholars worked at the behest of the Abbasid caliphs. At a time when the best book collections in Europe held several dozen volumes, the House of Wisdom boasted as many as four hundred thousand. Even while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful of intrepid Christian scholars, thirsty for knowledge, traveled to Arab lands and returned with priceless jewels of science, medicine, and philosophy that laid the foundation for the Renaissance. I n this brilliant, evocative book, Lyons shows just how much “Western” culture owes to the glories of medieval Arab civilization, and reveals the untold story of how Europe drank from the well of Muslim learning.

Melissa Aho - Library Journal

During the medieval period (500-1500 C.E.), much of Western Europe was a cultural backwater, characterized by ignorance, illiteracy, and violence. At the same time the Arabic world, including Antioch, CA³rdoba, and Baghdad (where the House of Wisdom, a library, book repository, and academy of scholars, was located) witnessed a flowering of scholars, libraries, scientific advances in medicine, mathematics, geography, astronomy, and agriculture, as well as the translation from Greek of Aristotle, Euclid, and Ptolemy, and other important works from Hindu and Persian scholars. Lyons (former editor, Reuters) shows us not only the Christian scholars, e.g., Adelard of Bath, in their quest for Arabic books and knowledge but also some of the great Muslim scholars like Albumazar and Averroes, as well as rulers and religious leaders-both Christian and Muslim. Lively and well researched, the book clarifies how Arabic books, ideas, and knowledge were found and brought back to Europe to help shape Western ideas. With a list of significant events and leading figures; highly recommended for general readers. (Bibliography, notes, and illustrations not seen.)

Kirkus Reviews

Former Reuters editor and foreign correspondent Lyons fashions an accessible study about early Western acquisition of scientific knowledge from the Arab world. Wading through centuries of anti-Muslim propaganda, Lyons traces how the brilliance of Arab knowledge, brought back by visiting scholars from intellectual centers like Baghdad, Antioch and Cordoba, transformed Western notions of science and philosophy. The Western "recovery" of classical learning, as championed later in the Renaissance, was actually first transmitted by these early Arab giants of learning, many of whom emerged from the Baghdad think tank, translation bureau and book repository called the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma), built by Caliph al-Mansur in the eighth century. The Baghdad court linked the triumphs of classical wisdom-especially that of the Greeks-with Persian, Hindu and other traditions, spurring the work of significant Arab thinkers such as al-Khwarizmi, who developed star tables, algebra and the astrolabe; al-Idrisi, who accepted a royal commission by Roger II of once-Muslim Sicily to construct the first comprehensive world's map, The Book of Roger; Avicenna, a Persian philosopher and physician who was an authority on medicine; and Averroes, the Muslim philosopher whose commentaries on Aristotle were a major contribution to Western thought. Lyons capably delineates the fascinating journey of this knowledge to the West, highlighting a few key figures, including Adelard of Bath, whose years spent in Antioch paid off grandly in bringing forth his translations of Euclid and al-Khwarizmi; and Michael Scot, science adviser and court astrologer to Frederick II, who translated Avicenna and Averroes. Lyonscleverly-though too briefly-ties these early theories to the work of Thomas Aquinas and Copernicus and the subsequent "invention of the West."Pertinent study that should aid in a better understanding between East and West. Author events in Washington, D.C. Agent: Will Lippincott/Lippincott Massie McQuilkin

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