The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization

by Jonathan Lyons

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608190587
• ISBN13: 9781608190584
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

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.

re-defining the west through its eastern roots

A common assertion, these days, is that quite some time ago the Arab world made a contribution to Western thought. Examples include the preservation of Greek texts from Plato and Aristotle, and some mathematical concepts such as the algebra. And there it stops. As Jonathon Lyons' book reveals, the Arabs did more than put some shutters and trim on the edifice of Western thought. They laid it's very foundation. In the years following the crusades, Europeans played catch up, learning merely by translating Arabic texts in science, philosophy, religion, medicine, and mathematics. In making his case Lyons describes who kept the flame of knowledge burning between during the Dark Ages. While European society ossified in feudalism, the Arab world bloomed. Lyons' examination of the ancient Arab world is relevant not only for foreign policymakers, but for academia. After all, as Lyons makes the case, the canon of Western thought, the site of so many turf wars, is not merely Western. Those quick to blame Islam for contemporary evils such as terrorism and social repression would do well to reconsider their positions--and Lyons' book offers a compelling reason for doing so.

Illuminating account of hidden chapter of history

In this fascinating book, Jonathan Lyons uncovers a mostly-unknown period of our history. During the Dark Ages and early medieval period, western Europe sunk into a deep pit of ignorance and intellectual stagnation. The scientific and philosophical achievements of the ancient world were forgtten. Europeans could not even tell the time or know for certain when Easter would fall. Europe was wrenched out of its ignorance, Lyons argues, by contact with the intellectually vibrant Islamic world, starting with the Crusades. Under the Caliphs of Bagdhad and later the Muslim rulers of Spain, Arab scientists and philosophers rediscovered the great thinkers of ancient Greece and subjected them to a rigorous analysis. They also learned from the vibrant traditions of Hindu India. While Europe huddled in intolerant misery, these Islamic rulers were open to all ideas, tolerated religious minorities and produced amazing advances in math, medicine, astronomy and other sciences. Lyons introduces us to Adelard of Bath, an Englishman who went to the Near East shortly after the First Crusade in search of the scientific secrets of the Arabs and came back laden with intellectual riches. This book is clearly written and bears the marks of years of rigorous research. My one question after completing it was, what happened to sap the Islamic world of its vitality. How did the spirit of questioning and free inquiry disappear? How did the Arab world cede primacy to the West? What brought it to its current miserable state? These are questions outside of the scope of this book but I wish the author had provided at least a brief outline. Full disclosure: the author and I worked together at Reuters for several years.

How and what we learned from the Arabs

An excellent story teller, Lyons uses the curiosity, conversations and travels of Adelard of Bath to provide a historic context for Arabic influence on European thought. Traveling to the east from his home in England's West Country, Adelard hoped to increase his knowledge by learning the teachings of the Arabs. As the story of the wandering Adelard unfolds, the reader gleans some knowledge of the dominant beliefs of the middle ages, the philosophical debates of the day, of Church ideology in shaping views of the Muslim world, the crusaders, and the incorporation of Arab innovations by some of the Christian conquerors. Adelard returns home after seven years of travel with knowledge gained about Euclidean geometry, alchemy, and astrology. His publication of "On the Use of the Astrolabe" provides the west with an aid to timekeeping, navigation and measurement of the physical world as well as an introduction to astronomy. One of the great centers of knowledge dissemination was the House of Wisdom. Located in Baghdad, it housed a library and translation/research center, and brought together from afar scholars as well as a very large collection of Persian, Sanskrit, and Greek texts of science and philosophy which became the bases of further advances in arithmetic, astronomy, medicine. For example, the Hindu "9 number system plus zero", which we use today, was explicated by Al-Khwarizmi, who later wrote "The Book of Restoring and Balancing", a study in algebra. In like manner, Cordoba in Muslim Spain became an important center for the dissemination of knowledge. Bordering directly on Christian Europe, ideas, poetry, fashions, and foodstuffs flowed from east to west. In al-Andalus, the innovations included sophisticated agronomy and engineering to ensure successful crops of fruits and foods previously unknown in a region and climate quite different from India and Persia. Eventually translators from European countries followed Adelard in pursuing Arab knowledge, returning with their translations and original works to build or enhance universities in Bologna, Paris and Oxford. This book is very accessible. It is written in so lively a prose the readers will hear Pope Urban II urging his crusaders to overcome the infidel Muslims and later will envision the scholars working together in translating ancient texts!

Fresh accessible take on development of Western culture

As Americans struggle to understand and define a relationship with the Muslim world, this book illustrates the many, and sometimes surprising, ways that the Arabs contributed to the development of our culture and way of life. At a time when we are likely to label Muslims as dangerous and different, this book demonstrates that, in fact, our early scientific and philosophical traditions are built on learnings imported from Baghdad and other centers of scholarship in the Middle Ages. I write this review on a day that this country is celebrating the start of a new era, embracing diversity at home and in the world. This book helps us understand why it's not crazy to include the Muslim world in that embrace. As a reader more interested in the modern day, I felt that the author does an amazing job of bringing the history and actors from this period to life and making them seem relevant to the 21st century. This is not a dry historical analysis, but rather an engaging page-turner that keeps the reader curious to find out what will come next. The timeline and summary of leading figures are helpful resources for the reader while maps and illustrations provide some additional color and context.