The House of Wisdom - How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization (Jonathon Lyons, 2009)

Great follow-on to two books just completed (here and here). Though per my usual reading approach this takes place by happenstance, not planning.

As I keep reading, this era becomes somewhat less cloudy. This book was very helpful.

Quickie chronology items (no particular significance other than they help me keep things in a bit of order):

312 - Constantine/Constantinople
476 - "official" collapse of Roman empire in the west
632 - Mohammed dies
732 - Islam expansion into Europe via Spain halts at Tours; Islam in Spain develops as a somewhat separate branch (al Andalus) (Islam also had expanded (and continued to expand) eastward, including ancient civilizations such as Persia and India)
762 - Baghdad founded - "House of Wisdom" (the subject of this book) founded shortly thereafter - bringing materials from Greece, Persia, India
800 - Charlemagne crowned
[1066 - Battle of Hastings, Vikings had traveled 'round, including southern Italy and Sicily]
1095 - First Crusade called
1100 - Adelard (major early figure in this book) travels east to learn from the Arabs
1270 - Thomas Aquinas (trying to reconcile faith and reason as these issues become more combustible with the spread of learning from Arab sources etc.)
1277 - Catholic church issues another detailed ban regarding various teachings (faith v. reason issues etc.) (this goes on much longer)
1453 - Constantinople taken by Ottomans
1492 - the "reconquista" is completed, Islam is out of Spain (and guess what, the dynamism diminishes rapidly into a super-conservative model, especially when the Jews were also later kicked out)
1517 - Luther's 95 Theses
1543 - Copernicus publishes
1571 - Battle of Lepanto
1633 - Galileo convicted
1683 - Battle of Vienna (last big push up the Danube by the Ottomans)

So what was up with these Arabs? Unbelievable energy; even if there was a power vacuum following Rome's collapse, the territorial conquest in ~100 years is unbelievable

And these were folks who previously had lived incredibly simple lives in the desert.

On top of the conquests, they actively sought to gather learning from areas with far deeper histories (India, Persia, Greece); to understand; to build. Luckily, they didn't have theocrats halting studies in those days. (Plenty in the West at the time.) Though it sounded like there was developing tension already in the Muslim world between religion and science.

Story lines:

1. Consistently low level of learning in the West. Lost access to classics after centuries of barbarian invasions, Muslim territorial grabs. Augustine set the tone - not much to learn beyond faith. (Can hear echoes of blind Jorge from The Name of the Rose to exactly this effect.)

2. Roger of Sicily - open to Arabs (like Lepanto books, can see where these Italian states prospered during these years, including Genoa, Florence and Venice)

3. Medicine, Euclidean geometry, Ptolemy, Aristotle, etc., etc. - the Arabs worked this stuff over, hard. (Even if for astrology (a traditional Persian focus) and alchemy to a significant extent).

4. Translators - including Averroes - constantly referred to in The Name of the Rose as a threat to Western church leaders - brought Aristotle to Europe. Averroes also did extensive commentaries, not just translations.

5. Cathedral schools transition into early universities; not much impressed by orders from church authorities to stop studying various topics.

6. Helped get a glimpse of how learning proceeded under Arabs, stagnated in the West, how a few individuals started the cross-pollination that became a flood.

7. That Muslims - though at odds with the West on various - weren't systematically demonized until the politicians and churchmen needed this for the First Crusade. Like most of these situations, demonizing wasn't applicable for those living on the boundary areas; they interact, trade, learn, etc.

8. With all the learning derived from Arabs - the West apparently later sought to suppress this heritage, instead claiming direct learning down from Greece. Which didn't happen.

9. Very bizarre to think of all the conflict over the centuries, what a shame.

10. And how the two groupings essentially switched sides in fairly short order - the West became a dynamic center of learning and "progress," the Islam world characterized by repression, theocrats, etc. Weird.