fascinating contribution regarding our scientific heritage | The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed...

Another Facet Of Western Civilization's Origins | The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization | Jonathan Lyons

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	• The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization Jonathan Lyons Bloomsbury Press, 2010 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Well-done!

Jonathan Lyons has crafted a marvelous work that details Arab contribution to Western culture. That makes it sound dull. But Lyons is quite a sprightly writer who breathes life into the Arab scientists and thinkers and to the courageous Western figures who feasted on Middle Eastern thought.

Lyons' research is meticulous, and his writing expertly weaves the span of history from the early Crusades, through the European Dark Ages to the brave Western souls who welcomed advanced Arab culture and science.

I found "The House of Wisdom" an important, ground-breaking work.

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fascinating contribution regarding our scientific heritage

I am a professional scientist and have always been very interested in the history of the development of science and mathematics since the earliest days of human civilization. I have read widely on this subject for decades out of my own personal interest. I have heard about and read about, for most of my life, the essential contributions of Arab cultures during the western dark and middle ages, both the original contributions (such as arabic numerals), and the preservation of much of western scientific literature dudring that dark period. Lyons has written a wornderful book that relates a great deal of this story, much of which I had not seen elsewhere. I was fully absorbed reading it. His writing is clear, the book is well organized, and taught me a great deal. I recommend it highly.

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Another Facet Of Western Civilization's Origins

This is a good book about the time before there was a European civilization, and one of the major forces that forged the Western culture of shared values. It is a story that too few Westerners are aware of, of the rich scientific and cultural heritage that had been developed and expanded over several centuries by established institutions developed and maintained by Islamic rulers as a matter of deliberate policy, particularly the Abbasid caliphs in the Levant and the intellectual centers in the Iberian Peninsula. The book demonstrates and documents that the Islamic East, Arabs and others, were far more than mere caretakers of ancient learning of the Greeks and Romans, among others, `lost' to the West by indifference and willful ignorance. Their cultivation of knowledge lead to a material culture far beyond what the savages north of the Mediterranean Sea could even comprehend, and an intellectual milieu that a reformed Europe did not have until its Age of Discovery several centuries later. Well written and well researched, an excellent read and rediscovery of one of the forces that created today's Western outlook.God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215

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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 visit cities like Baghdad or Antioch. There, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge, as well as keeping alive the works of Plato and Aristotle. When the best libraries in Europe held several dozen books, Baghdad's great library, The House of Wisdom, housed four hundred thousand. Jonathan Lyons shows just how much "Western" ideas owe to the Golden Age of Arab civilization.

Even while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful of intrepid Christian scholars, hungry for knowledge, traveled East and returned with priceless jewels of science, medicine, and philosophy that laid the foundation for the Renaissance. In this brilliant, evocative book Jonathan Lyons reveals the story of how Europe drank from the well of Muslim learning.

Jonathan Lyons served as an editor and foreign correspondent—mostly in the Muslim world—for Reuters for more than twenty years. He is now a researcher at the Global Terrorism Research Center and a Ph.D. candidate in the sociology of religion, both at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Jonathan Lyons' The House of Wisdom tells the 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. There, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge and revitalizing the works of Plato and Aristotle. In 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. In 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. “Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons' lively new book of medieval history . . . Lyons tells his multilayered story deftly, forsaking the tyranny of chronology to flesh out ideas and personalities.?—Stephen O?Shea, Los Angeles Times Book Review “Sophisticated and thoughtful . . . In The House of Wisdom, Jonathan Lyons shapes his narrative around the travels of the little-known but extraordinary Adelard of Bath, an English monk who traveled to the East in the early 12th century and learned Arabic well enough to translate mathematical treatises into English . . . Mr. Lyons's narrative is vivid and elegant.? –Eric Ormsby, Wall Street Journal

"Jonathan Lyons tells the story of the House of Wisdom, the caliphs who supported it and the people who worked there, at a riveting, breakneck pace."—The Times (UK)

"The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization is a 320-page treasure trove of information for the uninitiated that packs a powerful punch of science, history, geography, politics and general knowledge at a time when so much disinformation about the Arab world is swirling around in various media."—Magda Abu-Fadil, The Huffington Post

"With a storyteller's eye for the revealing detail and an artist's feel for the sweep of history, Jonathan Lyons has uncovered the debt that the Christian world—and Western civilization—owes to Muslim philosophy and science. House of Wisdom is a fascinating and picturesque page-turner."—Ian Bremmer, author of The J Curve

"Lyons capably delineates the fascinating journey of [Arab] 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."—Kirkus Reviews

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