The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization by Jonathan Lyons - Paperback – Illustrated

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 visit cities like Baghdad or Antioch. There, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge, as well as keeping alive the works of Plato and Aristotle. When the best libraries in Europe held several dozen books, Baghdad's great library, The House of Wisdom, housed four hundred thousand. Jonathan Lyons shows just how much "Western" ideas owe to the Golden Age of Arab civilization.


Even while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful of intrepid Christian scholars, hungry for knowledge, traveled East and returned with priceless jewels of science, medicine, and philosophy that laid the foundation for the Renaissance. In this brilliant, evocative book, Jonathan Lyons reveals the story of how Europe drank from the well of Muslim learning.

Product details

 

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 4, 2010
• Edition ‏ : ‎ Illustrated
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781608190584
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608190584
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.55 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Condition: Used Like New

 

About the Author: Jonathan Lyons

Jonathan Lyons is an accomplished author, journalist, and scholar whose work explores the crossroads of history, religion, and culture. For more than two decades, he served as a foreign correspondent and editor with Reuters, reporting from across the Islamic world and other regions shaped by deep historical currents. His unique background in both journalism and scholarship gives his writing a rare combination of narrative clarity and intellectual depth.

Lyons holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Monash University and has taught at leading institutions, including George Mason University, Georgetown University, and Monash University. He has also held fellowships and research positions at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and the Pushkin Institute in Moscow.

He is the author of The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, a widely acclaimed study of how the knowledge of the medieval Islamic world helped lay the foundations for Europe’s scientific and cultural awakening. His other works include Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terror and Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-First-Century Iran (with Geneive Abdo).

Through his writing and lectures, Jonathan Lyons continues to illuminate the ways ideas travel between civilizations and how the past continues to shape the modern world. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he writes and teaches.