The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization [IMPORT] (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

'A wonderful and important book which for the first time presents the Western debt to medieval Arabic learning in a clear, accessible manner. From the azimuth to the zenith, from algebra to the zero, so much of what the West takes for granted came to us from the Arab world ... A fascinating book' William Dalrymple

Review

 

"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 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 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)

“This is a refreshing book, one that discovers, or rediscovers, common ground between Islam and Christendom, a historical survey that reminds us that civilizations can converse as well as clash.” –Robert Cremins, Houston Chronicle

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (February 2, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0747594007
• ISBN-13: 978-0747594000
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #375,386 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Illuminating account of hidden chapter of history, February 11, 2009

By	Alan A. Elsner "Alan Elsner, author" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How and what we learned from the Arabs, January 24, 2009

By	C. Baril "audiobook reader" (Portland, Oregon United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization (Hardcover)

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!

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh accessible take on development of Western culture, January 20, 2009

By	DCreader (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization (Hardcover)

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.