The House of Wisdom

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 revitalizing the works of Plato and Aristotle. I n the


royal library of Baghdad, known as the House of Wisdom, an army of


scholars worked at the behest of the Abbasid caliphs. At a time when the


best book collections in Europe held several dozen volumes, the House


of Wisdom boasted as many as four hundred thousand.



Even


while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful


of intrepid Christian scholars, thirsty for knowledge, traveled to Arab


lands and returned with priceless jewels of science, medicine, and


philosophy that laid the foundation for the Renaissance. I n this


brilliant, evocative book, Lyons shows just how much "Western" culture


owes to the glories of medieval Arab civilization, and reveals the


untold story of how Europe drank from the well of Muslim learning.