The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization

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 catch even a glimpse of the

scientific advances coming from Baghdad, Antioch, or the cities of

Persia, Central Asia, and Muslim Spain. T here, philosophers,

mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of

knowledge and ...