A Must Read
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If you want to read a book that gives you a glimpse of the achievements of the Muslim world at the peak of the Islamic civilization, than this is the book to read.
It's a book about Muslim intellectuals, scientists, inventors, leaders and the significant achievements they made in the areas of astronomy, mathematics and medicine. The book also describes cities that were the centers of learning and intellectual thought in the world at the time such as Baghdad (Yes, the same Baghdad), Cordoba and Cairo.
My favourite account in the book is that of ibn Firnas, the inventor, who in the year 875 built a glider and flew for 10 minutes, but did not consider the mechanics of landing.
It is a well written book and easy to read.
A Timely but Unscholarly Book on Fascinating History
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This book is an exploration into the fascinating period in history when the Islamic World was a wellspring of intellectual flourishing. The second half of the 8th century to the 12th century in the Near East is a keystone of the intellectual history of human civilization, as the many great thinkers of this time period are responsible for translating, preserving and adding to the wealth of knowledge accumulated during the heyday of Classical Greece and Classical Rome. During this time period, there were countless advancements in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, optics, engineering and surgery while the Western world intellectually decayed during the Dark Ages. Actually, because these great thinkers kept the Aristotelian tradition of recognizing the power of the reasoning human mind and understanding that we all live in a knowable universe, it was possible for the Western world to eventually rediscover these values (by gaining access to the Islamic works) and to ignite the Renaissance.
Unlike many other books that touch upon this subject, this book recognizes the *individuals* who made specific intellectual achievements. Unfortunately, most other books typically credit much of the accomplishments to the Muslims in general. Needless to say, this is as uninformative and misleading as stating that 19th and 20th century Americans invented the light bulb, the telephone or the transistor.
In this book, amongst many other things, you will learn about:
* al-Haytham and his seminal work on optics
* Omar Khayyam, and his written eloquent and insightful attacks on religious mysticism that were ahead of his time
* Ibn Firnas and his designing and testing of a flying contraption
* Ibn Sina's (Avicenna) impressive list of accomplishments in medicine, including his extensive study of human anatomy, of various infectious diseases, of bone fractures, of cancers, his introduction of over 700 drugs and a rudimentary understanding of a scientific approach to clinical trials.
* Al-Zahrawi's advancements in suture, antiseptics, and obstetrics
* And many more, including the great mathematician al-Khwarzimi, the chemist Jabir ibn Haiyan, the physician Maimonides, the staunch Aristotelian Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and the prolific translator of the classical works Al-Kindi.
Unfortunately, this book has a number of salient flaws. First of all, the style of presentation is very unpleasing for those who enjoy reading history to accumulate facts. Each chapter begins with several pages of a contemporary fictional account that intends to serve as a lead in, but, in my opinion, is uninteresting and detracts from the book. More importantly, the author provides no citations. This blurs the divide between fact and speculation, which is in particular very bad here, since the author warns the reader that he dressed up the factual content with "imaginary recreations."
Second of all, the author intentionally does not attempt to answer the most important questions: "What caused the deluge of intellectual achievement in the Muslim world of the Middle Ages?" and "What brought this brilliant era to a halt?". In fact, the author indicated that he did not wish to "settle any academic debates" but instead sought to incorporate elements from each of many competing and contradictory viewpoints. Unfortunately, this leaves the reader with a sense of incompleteness and suggests that while the author sought to present the truth when it came to individuals and their accomplishments, he was not interested in presenting the truth behind the causal, intellectual forces that drove history.
This book gets four stars because an accessible book on the Golden Age of the Near East is such a rare commodity. I think a much better book (one that lacks the meek, non-judgmental multiculturalist tone) can be written. If other such books existed, then I surely would have rated this book much lower. But until then, this is all that is available.
