The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization - Softcover

Lyons, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1608190587 ISBN 13: 9781608190584

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Jonathan Lyons served as editor and foreign correspondent - mostly in the Muslim world - for Reuters for more than 20 years. He is now a researcher at the Global Terrorism Research Center and a PhD candidate in sociology of religion, both at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Review:

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 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.--Kirkus

"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 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."--Kirkus

""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, "Huffington Post"

"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."--"Times" (UK)

"Sophisticated and thoughtful... In "The" "House of Wisdom," [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.... Mr. Lyons's narrative is vivid and elegant."--"Wall Street Journal"

"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 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."--Kirkus

""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, "Huffington Post"

"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."--"Times" (UK)

"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 Englishmonk 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 vividly conveys the excitement young European scholars travelling east must have felt as they glimpsed a dazzling new world of learning." -Jo Marchant, "New Scientist" (UK)

"In unearthing this buried intellectual heritage, Jonathan Lyons gives us a new and important understanding of our historical and cultural relation to Islam and the Arab world... this is a well crafted, powerful account which asks us to re-examine our assumptions about East and West, a task never so necessary as now." -Marc Lambert, "Scotsman" (UK)

""

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1608190587
• ISBN 13: 9781608190584
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272