Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World
Long before the European Renaissance, while the western world was languishing in what was once called the 'Dark Ages', the Arab world was ablaze with the knowledge, invention and creativity of its Golden Age. This is the story of how Islamic science, which began with the translation of Greek manuscripts into Arabic in eighth-century Baghdad, preserved and enhanced the knowledge acquired from Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge was carried from Samarkand and Baghdad to Cordoba and beyond, influencing western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas and Copernicus and helping to inspire the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance. John Freely tells this spellbinding story against a background of the melting pot of cultures involved and concludes with the decline of Islam's Golden Age, which led the West to forget the debt it owed to the Muslim world and the influence of medieval Islamic civilisation in forging the beginnings of modern science.
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Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World
Long before the European Renaissance, while the western world was languishing in what was once called the 'Dark Ages', the Arab world was ablaze with the knowledge, invention and creativity of its Golden Age. This is the story of how Islamic science, which began with the translation of Greek manuscripts into Arabic in eighth-century Baghdad, preserved and enhanced the knowledge acquired from Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge was carried from Samarkand and Baghdad to Cordoba and beyond, influencing western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas and Copernicus and helping to inspire the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance. John Freely tells this spellbinding story against a background of the melting pot of cultures involved and concludes with the decline of Islam's Golden Age, which led the West to forget the debt it owed to the Muslim world and the influence of medieval Islamic civilisation in forging the beginnings of modern science.
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Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World

Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World

by John Freely
Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World

Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World

by John Freely

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Overview

Long before the European Renaissance, while the western world was languishing in what was once called the 'Dark Ages', the Arab world was ablaze with the knowledge, invention and creativity of its Golden Age. This is the story of how Islamic science, which began with the translation of Greek manuscripts into Arabic in eighth-century Baghdad, preserved and enhanced the knowledge acquired from Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge was carried from Samarkand and Baghdad to Cordoba and beyond, influencing western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas and Copernicus and helping to inspire the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance. John Freely tells this spellbinding story against a background of the melting pot of cultures involved and concludes with the decline of Islam's Golden Age, which led the West to forget the debt it owed to the Muslim world and the influence of medieval Islamic civilisation in forging the beginnings of modern science.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780857731012
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 12/18/2010
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 264
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

John Freely (1926-2017) was born in New York and joined the US Navy at the age of seventeen, serving with a commando unit in Burma and China during the last years of World War II. He has lived in New York, Boston, London, Athens and Istanbul and has written over thirty travel books and guides, most of them about Greece and Turkey.

Table of Contents

Prologue. The Scriptorium at the Süleymaniye

Chapter 1. Science Before Science, Mesopotamia and Egypt
Chapter 2. The Land of the Greeks
Chapter 3. The Roads to Baghdad
Chapter 4. 'Abbasid Baghdad: The House of Wisdom
Chapter 5. Spiritual Physick
Chapter 6. From Baghdad to Central Asia
Chapter 7. The Cure of Ignorance
Chapter 8. Fatimid Cairo: The Science of Light
Chapter 9. Ayyubid and Mamluk Cairo: Healing Body and Soul
Chapter 10. Ingenious Mechanical Devices
Chapter 11. Islamic Technology
Chapter 12. Al-Andalus: Muslim Spain
Chapter 13. From the Maghrib to the Two Sicilies: Arabic into Latin
Chapter 14. Incoherent Philosophers
Chapter 15. Mongol Maragha and Samarkand: Spheres Within Spheres
Chapter 16. Arabic Science and the European Renaissance
Chapter 17. Copernicus and His Arabic Predecessors
Chapter 18. The Scientific Revolution
Chapter 19. The Heritage of Islamic Science

Notes
Bibliography
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