Customer Reviews

Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World

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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

ALADDIN'S LAMP: HOW GREEK SCIENCE CAME TO EUROPE THROUGH THE ISLAMIC WORLD BY JOHN FREELY: John Freely takes on a subject he clearly already knows a lot about, having written books on Istanbul, Turkey, Crete, and a good portion of Asia Minor. In Aladdin's Lamp he goes into extreme detail in revealing how we are today able to enjoy the Greek classics of Plato, Homer, and many others. While the book at times takes on an almost classroom-like routine with chapter after chapter, throwing more information in an almost dry, regurgitative sense; Aladdin's Lamp is nevertheless a very interesting book into the history of the classics and how they survived.

Freely begins at the beginning, perhaps going on for a little too long, but clearly relishing in telling the reader about some of the great works of the Greeks, with the likes of Archimedes, Plato, and Pythagoras, and what it is they found out in a time when science was a barely flourishing discipline. While on the one hand these were some amazing people who were able to come up with standards of architecture, and a surprisingly close approximation of the circumference of the Earth, Freely needs to get on with the reason for writing this book, and not give us a history lesson on Ancient Greece.

The first third of the book done, Freely finally goes into the next chapter of the Islamic world, how Baghdad was a paradise of the world that flourished with culture and literature. It was because of a number of circumstances, and the constant mixing of peoples with trade from throughout the Western World, that these sacred texts were first preserved after the fall of the Rome and then the Byzantine world, and then translated.

While the information may be overbearing at times and Freely lacks in a certain storytelling quality of making the book as enjoyable as some other works of nonfiction, Aladdin's Lamp does provide insight into the turbulent times of the early Middle Ages, when civilizations and countries rose and fell within the blink of an eye, while culture and literature and science was kept - at times in secret - to be read and enjoyed by future generations.

I have read this book cover to cover, occasionally sharing it out-loud with friends and discussing it over a period of weeks. My friends begged me to stop. I myself couldn't believe I didn't just consign this book to the "useless" category. The premise that Greek Science came to Europe through the islamic world is inarguably established in this work, as to the specifics of how, that is still a very vaguely answered question. This book suffers from its breadth and brevity combined. I am almost assured that there was an editor but it seems that this editor unfortunately chose to cut and expand on the wrong parts entirely, as if there was no encompassing vision for the finished work.

When first encountering the book in a store, I randomly read some of the beginning and some of the parts near the end. This accidentally lead me into the only clear and interesting section of the book. So definitely this book is not without its merits. However, several of the chapters seem to have been written independently of the whole, and edited into the work. Most of these appear at the end. The closing chapter, while taking an interestingly personal approach, doesn't add to any part of the book other than to establish the idea that "Aladdin's lamp" is metaphorical for the flourishing of science and that not all scientists under Islam were members of that faith. The section on the Archimedes Palimpsest and the Antikythera computer are relevant and interesting, yet felt like a meld of material I'd read earlier, and didn't directly support any conclusion to this book.

This issue is that while this book may be thorough, grammatically correct, and expansive, it's raw unedited lecture-notes style defies my concept of well-written. One might argue that it is merely not well-edited, but the author himself should have seen the first 12 chapters (of 18) or the first 177 pages of 255 to be a mistaken approach. They are so full of potentially important or interesting information entirely lacking in stress and focus to make them impossible to be committed to memory in all but the broadest sense. The take away is literally "Greek science came to Europe through the Islamic world." It is simply not possible to make heads or tails of the barrage or people's names, places, birth dates, publishing dates, and manuscript titles, often presented in both the original and the Latin name.

Had this book been presented instead as a graph of names, books, dates, and places, it might have made a lot more sense. The organization suffers from neither focussing on any life, nor book, nor time, nor location, instead weaving back and forth through any of these in slowly progressing loops. Although the title chapters might lead one to presume that the main progression is geographic, within each chapter these geographic focuses are quickly broadened and become disjointed. For example, Galileo himself is discussed in parts over 3 chapters. Of course the natural philosophers and other Greeks come up as needed throughout. The link of translation in Baghdad and Al Andalus is presented well after the discussion of the scientific revolution has concluded.

After the disjointed progression through the Ancient and Islamic world, coming to clear sections on Copernicus, Kepler, Brahe, and Newton is a breath of fresh air that probably inadvertently mimics what the revolution must have felt like. These sections are filled with an organized set of details from the lives of these important scientists. Tiny scraps of similar information for others are available and occasionally presented throughout the previous sections, and yet they are both too few and too brief to be satisfying. Notes on the supposed magical practices of various scholars of the middle-ages are some of the few interesting diversions to be had for the first 177 pages.

Clearly numerous persons throughout deserve their own biographies, and no one book could adequately touch on fairly complete information for so many persons. However by presenting the first two thirds of the book in a manner that introduces a new person or new work two to five times per page John Freely has stayed too close to a lecture style presentation of facts. This results in a tedious and impenetrable barrage of uncategorizable data points rarely punctuated by a few interesting and unusual insights that fail to be developed with any detail. This method is only briefly given pause when presenting Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Newton, and unfortunately none of the latter sections directly demonstrate the premise of the book. Had the author focused on only the works and actors in the Islamic capitals, or say only in the history of translation in Al Andalus, the work might have been made more interesting, and could have supported clearer though likely multi-volume inquiry into the topic.

This book is a history of science, and Greek philosophy in general, starting from its origins with the ancient Greeks and following its lineage all the way to Isaac Newton in Western Europe. The accomplishments of each scientist is detailed, in an almost unbroken chain. Although the detail is impressive, the book sometimes reads like a laundry list, and generally fails to present the context of the society in which the science took place. Despite the title, the author details how Greek thought reached Europe not just via the Islamic world, but also directly from the western Roman empire (via the church) and from the Byzantine empire. Less than a third of the book is about Arabic science.

Reading the text, one would think that Islamic history was a long unbroken period of free scientific inquiry. Almost no mention is made of religious opposition to scientific thought, and the many periods in which it was suppressed. Science flourished only when the religious Islam had less influence over the ruling elites. One might think the author (who has spent most of his life teaching in Turkey) is presenting a biased view, but the European section of the book is written the same way. There were significant periods when the knowledge from the Greeks was collected and improved upon, particularly during the Abbasid period starting in 762. Islamic science also flourished during times in Spain and Sicily, from which it reached Western Europe. Two chapters are devoted to the development of European science form the tenth to fifteenth centuries, a period commonly thought of as the wasteland of the Dark Ages.

The book begins with Greek philosophy and science, first mainly in Ionia (now western Turkey) and later in Athens. These Greeks learned mathematics and astronomy from Egypt and Babylonia, and extended it with their own ideas, which were the foundation of scientific knowledge for the next few thousand years. The astronomy was fundamentally flawed by a complex explanation for the movement of the planets, a workable but confusing system that remained in effect until Copernicus. Astrology was an integral part of that astronomy, so those false concepts persisted as well. The next phase of Greek science took place in Alexandria, among many others by Euclid and Archimedes. The astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, around 250 BC, developed a heliocentric theory with the Earth orbiting the sun and spinning on its axis, but this was not accepted because it conflicted with the notion of the earth as the center of the universe.

As the book is largely written in chronological order, I was surprised there was no mention of the Ottoman empire, even though that is where the author lives. That is rectified in the (short) second to last chapter, where he finally takes on the issue of the decline of Islamic science. This began with the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, but the author claims that Islamic science reached a new peak under the Mongol rulers and the Ottoman rulers, who conquered Constantinople in 1453. Science apparently came to an end with the appearance of the comet of 1578. The Muslim religions authority stated that the observatory would bring disaster by prying into the secrets of nature, so it was destroyed. Finally, he says "The question my students always ask is why Islamic astronomy declined so sharply after the time of Takiyuddin (the head of the observatory that was destroyed), whose contemporary Tycho Brahe paved the foundation for the new astronomy of western Europe." But he makes no attempt to answer the question, only mentioning that some astronomy continued to be done to measure the months of the Muslim calendar, and concluding,

"And so Islamic astronomers continued to make observations in the same way as had their Arabic and Greek predecessors, while their European contemporaries began the intellectual revolution that led to the emergence of modern science. Thus the Islamic world was left behind as its vast empires declined and fell, living on the fading memory of the great accomplishments of its [scientists], who passed on Greek science to the West along with the advances they had made on their own."

This is a reasonably good book on the history of science, although it could be improved by reducing the number of short descriptions of minor scientific figures. Instead, provide a timeline as an appendix. The reader interested in Islamic history should realize that this book does not (nor was it really intended to) present a complete or balanced picture.

This book is a disaster, but interesting. The editor should be flogged.

Essentially this is a chronological glossary of scholars, translators, philosophers and scientists from the greek through arabic to renaissance era.

No figure gets more than say 3 paragraphs for the most part. It is an interesting tour de force of the subject. But there is no story, there is no tracking of specific ideas of how the science transmitted. Just a series of chronological people and what they achieved simple stated.

Now I did enjoy the wander through history and figures and put some into my own knowledge frame of reference. But by the 2nd chapter I had to will myself to keep reading.

What a mess and a tragedy given the extensive knowledge inside the covers so unimaginiatively constructed. Definiately a bad move by the editor to let this go out.

I gave this book two stars only because of the subject matter. Any attempt to broaden one's cultural knowledge and expectations deserves some praise.

But the praise stops there. I can not imagine a more dull and tedious book. The author's approach is to devote each chapter to an Islamic city, more or less in the historical order in which they came to prominence, and then list every scholar whose works might be considered scientific. (Astrology counts.) There is no attempt to amplify the discussion, to bring to life any of the figures mentioned or to put things into a broader historical context.

A dry and dusty tome.

I agree with the original review, and some of the others. Freely is obviously amazingly erudite, but really has no idea how to write an interesting book. Here is one of the most amazing stories in history, full of juiciness, crazy people, fascinating ideas, worlds of notions saved or lost by the skin of their teeth. What we get are pages and pages of digested names and places over and over. I had great expectations for this book, and it is a real disappointment.

How could someone make Harun al-Raschid, Omar Khayyam, and Moses Maimonides so boring?

This is a beautiful book, a double bridge between science and art as well as West and East. In many ways it is the pinnacle of John Freely's unique and broad career. A physicist and a historian, native to the West but naturalized to the East by scholarship and experience, Freely presents this vast topic as no one else can and takes the reader on a delightful journey.

John Freely shows his usual assurance and erudition in this volume as he deals with the vast contribution of Classical knowledge that was both transmitted and also developed and added to by the Islamic world.

The book is more than just a superficial tour: Freely brings these often obscure eras and ideas to life.

For anyone interested in the history and development of ideas, this book will be both a resource and a delight.

In Aladdin's Lamp, John Freely displays his usual profound scholarship and breadth of knowledge in treating this fascinating subject. It may not appeal to the casual reader, but will be appreciated by the serious reader seeking a thorough, well-written account. This book was an absorbing read cover to cover and will remain on my shelf as a valuable reference tool.

A lengthy critical review of this book is available at The Brussels Journal: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3854

An abstract:

[...]

Al-Azhar was created in the tenth century and is often hailed as one of the oldest "universities" in the world. However, as late as the twentieth century, the blind Egyptian author Taha Husayn (1889-1973) complained about the total lack of critical thinking he encountered at the institution:

"The four years I spent [at al-Azhar] seemed to me like forty, so utterly drawn out they were....It was life of unrelieved repetition, with never a new thing, from the time the study began until it was over. After the dawn prayer came the study of Tawhid, the doctrine of [Allah's] unity; then fiqh, or jurisprudence, after sunrise; then the study of Arabic grammar during the forenoon, following a dull meal; then more grammar in the wake of the noon prayer. After this came a grudging bit of leisure and then, again, another snatch of wearisome food until, the evening prayer performed, I proceeded to the logic class which some shaikh or other conducted.

Throughout these studies it was all merely a case of hearing re-iterated words and traditional talk which aroused no chord in my heart, nor taste in my appetite. There was no food for one's intelligence, no new knowledge adding to one's store."

Taha Husayn was the kind of intellectual who found absolutely no room for free inquiry at this leading Islamic madrasa. He enrolled at the new, secular University of Cairo, founded after European models, in 1908, and continued his education at the Sorbonne in Paris. Although best know abroad for his autobiography Al-Ayyam (The Days), he created a controversy in Egypt by daring to suggest that some passages of the Koran should not be read literally, and for claiming that some pre-Islamic poetry had been forged to give credibility to traditional Islamic history. For this he was accused of heresy. Had he lived in the more aggressively Islamic atmosphere a few generations later, he might well have been killed for this. Fellow Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) was stabbed in the neck and almost killed by enraged Muslims in 1994.

The German-Syrian reformist writer Bassam Tibi points out that the Muslim thinkers who developed Greek rationalism are today often despised in their own civilization. As he writes in his book Islam Between Culture and Politics, "rational sciences were - in medieval Islam - considered to be `foreign sciences' and at times heretical. At present, Islamic fundamentalists do not seem to know that rational sciences in Islam were based on what was termed ulum al-qudama (the sciences of the Ancients)."

The Islamic madrasa was not concerned with a process of reason-based investigation or unrestrained enquiry but with a learning process in the sacral sense:

"Some Islamic historians wrongly translate the term madrasa as university. This is plainly incorrect: If we understand a university as universitas litterarum, or consider, without the bias of Eurocentrism, the cast of the universitas magistrorum of the thirteenth century in Paris, we are bound to recognise that the university as a seat for free and unrestrained enquiry based on reason, is a European innovation in the history of mankind."

According to Bassam Tibi, the situation has changed less than one might think:

"In Muslim societies, where higher institutions of learning have a deeply rooted procedure of rote-learning, the content of positive sciences adopted from Europe is treated in a similar fashion. Verses of the Koran are learned by heart because they are infallible and not to be enquired into. Immanuel Kant's Critiques or David Hume's Enquiry, now available in Arabic translation, are learned by heart in a similar manner and not conceived of in terms of their nature as problem-oriented enquiries." As a result, "In contrast to the European and the US-model, students educated in a traditional Islamic institution of learning neither have a Bildung (general education) nor an Ausbildung (training)."

This is a problem members of this culture bring with them abroad. In Denmark, Århus city council member Ali Nuur has complained that one of the challenges certain immigrant groups face in the education system is that they are unfamiliar with tests rooted in a rational, critical and analytical way of thinking.

The English monk and scholar Adelard of Bath, who traveled to the East in the early twelfth century and made Latin translations of texts such as Euclid's Elements from Arabic sources, is a prominent figure in Jonathan Lyons' book The House of Wisdom. But as we have seen, Euclid's Elements was translated into Arabic by non-Muslims such as Thabit ibn Qurra in the first place.

[...]

Having not read the book, I give it a neutral rating.