The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance

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The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance

3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 · rating details · 88 ratings · 19 reviews

A myth-shattering view of the medieval Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations, which preceded-and enabled-the European Renaissance.

The Arabic legacy of science and philosophy has long been hidden from the West. British-Iraqi physicist Jim Al-Khalili unveils that legacy to fascinating effect by returning to its roots in the hubs of Arab innovation that would advanc...more A myth-shattering view of the medieval Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations, which preceded-and enabled-the European Renaissance.

The Arabic legacy of science and philosophy has long been hidden from the West. British-Iraqi physicist Jim Al-Khalili unveils that legacy to fascinating effect by returning to its roots in the hubs of Arab innovation that would advance science and jump-start the European Renaissance. Inspired by the Koranic injunction to study closely all of God's works, rulers throughout the Islamic world funded armies of scholars who gathered and translated Persian, Sanskrit, and Greek texts. From the ninth through the fourteenth centuries, these scholars built upon those foundations a scientific revolution that bridged the one-thousand-year gap between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.

Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science were actually the result of Arab ingenuity: Astronomers laid the foundations for the heliocentric model of the solar system long before Copernicus; physicians accurately described blood circulation and the inner workings of the eye ages before Europeans solved those mysteries; physicists made discoveries that laid the foundation for Newton's theories of optics. But the most significant legacy of Middle Eastern science was its evidence-based approach-the lack of which kept Europeans in the dark throughout the Dark Ages. The father of this experimental approach to science-what we call the scientific method-was an Iraqi physicist who applied it centuries before Europeans first dabbled in it. Al-Khalili details not only how discoveries like these were made, but also how they changed European minds and how they were ultimately obscured by later Western versions of the same principles.

With transporting detail, Al-Khalili places the reader in the intellectual and cultural hothouses of the Arab Enlightenment: the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, one of the world's greatest academies, the holy city of Isfahan, the melting pots of Damascus and Cairo, and the embattled Islamic outposts of Spain.

Al-Khalili tackles two tantalizing questions: Why did the Arab world enter its own Dark Age after such a dazzling enlightenment? And how much did Arabic learning contribute to making the Western world as we know it? Given his singular combination of expertise in both the Western and Middle Eastern scientific traditions, Al-Khalili is uniquely qualified to solve those riddles.

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Hardcover, 336 pages

Published March 31st 2011 by Penguin Press HC, The (first published January 1st 2011)

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Mar 31, 2013 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jim Al Khalili is a physicist whose family has deep roots in one of the culturally leading families of Iraq. His mother and first name are British and he was born and raised in Britain making him ideal to mediate between Islamic and European cultures in describing the wonders of this House. The founding of the "House of Wisdom" by Al Mamun in the 800s A.D. (C.E.) was necessitated by dream in which the instructions came right from Aristotle. However, Islamic culture did more than just conserve cl...more

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Nov 10, 2011 Jenny Brown rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'm a long-time reader of books on the history of science. I'm fascinated with non-European cultures and have been reading heavily in that topic area. So this book should have been perfect for me, but instead it bored me.

Too often it read like a string of names and places with very little substantive information about the people being discussed. The author covers so many people that none of them are given much space save for a few mathematicians whose contributions are discussed so technically...more

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May 20, 2011 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars

A well written, insightfull and smart read.

Jim Al-Khalili is obviusly proud of his roots. And i like that.

Without being to missionary about it, he makes a good point in the fact that the Mideastern knowledge that started in Mesopotamian times and evolved all the way through our dark ages until the renaissance, was very influential on the occidents development of not only medicine, or architecture but also poetry, astronomie and art.

The questions of how and why the Islamic knowledge is suddenly r...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Priya Chand rated it 3 of 5 stars

The title offers a very oversimplified version of the thesis (better marketing, I'd presume; a controversial title attracts a lot more attention than something honest), so that's nice to have. As you may have guessed, this book is about how the Arab/Muslim groups (really Arabic-speaking, something Al-Khalili explains early on; a number of the luminaries in this book had little to no Arab blood) did a lot more for science and the Age of Enlightenment than simply pass on some translated Greek text...more The title offers a very oversimplified version of the thesis (better marketing, I'd presume; a controversial title attracts a lot more attention than something honest), so that's nice to have. As you may have guessed, this book is about how the Arab/Muslim groups (really Arabic-speaking, something Al-Khalili explains early on; a number of the luminaries in this book had little to no Arab blood) did a lot more for science and the Age of Enlightenment than simply pass on some translated Greek texts. It's a view that deserves more consideration (and he does a great job of giving it relevant context in the last chapter, which discusses what modern Muslim/Arabic-speaking countries should do to foment more scientific progress). I managed to skip studying medieval history twice in school, but I remember that the contributions of Arabic speakers being summed up in about one line before we moved on to Newton and all those guys. Al-Khalili, recounting his own education, says something similar about Europeans completely dominating science...and he went to school in Iraq, so this is clearly not just Western bias.

A brief aside on bias: Al-Khalili is very open about his, and given that he's lived in both Iraq and England and is also half-British, not to mention an atheist, this is fairly reassuring. He does insert a few opinions and anecdotes into the text, but I suspect these were done to liven up the otherwise dry and impersonal recounting of events. He's a theoretical nuclear physicist and this shows in the work: one, for his healthy respect of the scientific method (which I share), and two, because he attempts to recount the facts without taking a particular side. I actually walked away from this book without being solidly convinced that Arabic work is the foundation of all Renaissance science; it's not a view he himself holds, not when it isn't backed up with the facts.

At least nowadays it's not to the point where it's suggested the Arabs added literally nothing to the Greek texts they preserved, but there is still this attitude that the 'giants' Newton references were solely Westerners or, if not his near contemporaries, Classical scholars.

I would call this more a work of historiography than anything else. (If you're unfamiliar with the term, it refers to analyzing what is commonly accepted as historical fact, including the authenticity of primary documents and veracity of sources.) As I mentioned above, Al-Khalili isn't attempting to create a strongly opinionated narrative; he's recounting facts that have either been obscured by selective reinterpretations or more recently discovered. Again, there has been a tradition of ignoring these accomplishments, and he frequently refutes himself (or stops the reader from concluding that so-and-so did it all first) by pointing out that the Arabic scholars were, for instance, necessary to Copernicus' mathematical proof of heliocentrism but did not achieve the synthesis to reach that point. (They were, according to this book, pretty much all geocentric.)

Anyway, I think a more casual reader won't like how dry this is. Al-Khalili doesn't try to add narrative veneers to the history, although sometimes there is a hint of narrative in the way the solution to scientific questions (especially geometry) are approached. The big take-away from this is, as he says, that science is never really down to some total genius figuring everything out, but rather ends up credited to the person who happens to be in a position to both synthesize previous ideas and gain notice for them.(less)

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Nov 05, 2011 Kent rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, history-world

Al-Khalili goes to great lengths in The House of Wisdom to document and celebrate every historical Arabic, Persian, or more generally, any Islamic effort to sustain, promote and advance scientific, mathematical, or astronomical discovery. While reading this book, it came across to me that his main objective was to prove that the Arab world had something to offer in these fields of study, too.

I would have liked to have read more detail about the individual lives of the many Arabs and Persians (an...more

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Jun 12, 2011 Einschrein rated it 5 of 5 stars

I learned about evolution in high school biology class (no one thought to mention it before this time), and I certainly never learned about (Allah forbid) the Arabs/Muslims/Islam in history class. (And I went to New Trier!) I learned about the "Closing of the Western Mind" by reading Charles Freeman's book of the same name, the same man who writes about the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, antiquity, etc. (This book is well worth a read!) The closing of the western mind allowed the eastern mind to ope...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

The Arabic legacy of science and philosophy has long been hidden from the West. British-Iraqi physicist Jim Al-Khalili unveils that legacy to fascinating effect by returning to its roots in the hubs of Arab innovation that would advance science and jump-start the European Renaissance. Inspired by the Koranic injunction to study closely all of God's works, rulers throughout the Islamic world funded armies of scholars who gathered and translated Persian, Sanskrit, and Greek texts. From the ninth t...more The Arabic legacy of science and philosophy has long been hidden from the West. British-Iraqi physicist Jim Al-Khalili unveils that legacy to fascinating effect by returning to its roots in the hubs of Arab innovation that would advance science and jump-start the European Renaissance. Inspired by the Koranic injunction to study closely all of God's works, rulers throughout the Islamic world funded armies of scholars who gathered and translated Persian, Sanskrit, and Greek texts. From the ninth through the fourteenth centuries, these scholars built upon those foundations a scientific revolution that bridged the one-thousand-year gap between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.

Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science were actually the result of Arab ingenuity: Astronomers laid the foundations for the heliocentric model of the solar system long before Copernicus; physicians accurately described blood circulation and the inner workings of the eye ages before Europeans solved those mysteries; physicists made discoveries that laid the foundation for Newton's theories of optics. But the most significant legacy of Middle Eastern science was its evidence-based approach-the lack of which kept Europeans in the dark throughout the Dark Ages. The father of this experimental approach to science-what we call the scientific method-was an Iraqi physicist who applied it centuries before Europeans first dabbled in it. Al-Khalili details not only how discoveries like these were made, but also how they changed European minds and how they were ultimately obscured by later Western versions of the same principles.

With transporting detail, Al-Khalili places the reader in the intellectual and cultural hothouses of the Arab Enlightenment: the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, one of the world's greatest academies, the holy city of Isfahan, the melting pots of Damascus and Cairo, and the embattled Islamic outposts of Spain.

Al-Khalili tackles two tantalizing questions: Why did the Arab world enter its own Dark Age after such a dazzling enlightenment? And how much did Arabic learning contribute to making the Western world as we know it? Given his singular combination of expertise in both the Western and Middle Eastern scientific traditions, Al-Khalili is uniquely qualified to solve those riddles.

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Jul 09, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Really interesting book on the contributions made by Arabic scientists, many of which are either unknown or under appreciated in the west. From the invention of algebra (an Arabic word al-jebr); advances in medicine, astronomy, engineering, economics. It really makes the point that Arabic scientists made important and revolutionary contributions to science as well as providing links between the Ancient Greek world and the Renaissance in Europe.

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Mar 19, 2013 محمد الهاشمي rated it 4 of 5 stars

جميل جدا لولا بعض السرد المطول في إجزاء منه. كل عربي بحاجة لمعرفة تاريخ أمته من منظور الغرب الذي يدين للعرب بالفضل، ليس فقط من منظور الجملة التي يرددها كثيرون ولا يعرفون شيئا عن تفاصيلها "الغرب تعلم من حضارة المسلمين"

تعلم ماذا؟
هل يمكنك ذكر أسماء من تعلموا منهم من علمائنا؟
كم اختراعا عربيا أو اسلاميا تعرف عنه؟
ما هي النظريات والعلوم الغربية التي استندت إلى اكتشافات المسلمين؟

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Apr 11, 2013 Janie rated it 2 of 5 stars

The House of Wisdom covers a topic that anyone interested in the development of math and science over history and the origins of great scientific ideas should be thrilled to read; given the Euro-centric focus of many U.S. readers and writers in this respect, a glimpse into the Islamic world of science history is a treat. I am delighted to have read about the many early Islamic scientists and mathematicians grappling with the problems of day while Europe languished in dark ages. Other reviewers,...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Kathy Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: jim-khalili, science

Wow this book is amazing,this is such a mysterios period in humanities history but this author sheds a lot of light on some of the mystery of losing all of this knowledge...5*

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Dec 03, 2012 ACRL added it

Shelves: motw

Read by ACRL Member of the Week Yasmeen Shorish. Learn more about Yasmeen on the ACRL Insider blog.

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Mar 07, 2012 Kylie Kelly marked it as to-read

Has a really amazing description on his site, it's something i really want to read.

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Mar 28, 2012 Carole rated it 3 of 5 stars

Very readable.

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Apr 11, 2011 Matthew Jackson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Surprisingly yawn worthy.

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Jul 25, 2011 Hesper rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, history

More like 4.5, I think. Review coming.

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Nov 20, 2011 إديث rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mena, cultured-living

Highly readable and interesting primer on the history of science from a particular period.

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Apr 14, 2013 Anupa added it

It was interesting, I enjoyed reading about how everything we have now was influenced by someone. It took many generations and different cultures to bring about the inventions we have today.

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Nov 30, 2012 Liverpooljack rated it 4 of 5 stars

Re-reading this fabulous book until something new comes along

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May 18, 2013 Brittany marked it as to-read

Shelves: nonfiction

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May 16, 2013 Brent marked it as to-read

Shelves: history

May 12, 2013 Zainab Alshatter added it

May 10, 2013 Mona rated it 5 of 5 stars

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May 09, 2013 Linda marked it as to-read

Shelves: library, nonfiction

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About Jim Al-Khalili

Jim Al-Khalili(born Jameel Sadik Al-Khalili) is an Iraqi-born British theoretical physicist, author and science communicator. He is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey. He has hosted several BBC productions about science and is a frequent commentator about science in other British media venues.

(taken and modified from Wikipedia...more

More about Jim Al-Khalili...

Books by Jim Al-Khalili

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Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines

Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science

Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines, Second Edition

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