Experimental Blog #103

A summary of "The House of Wisdom - How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance" by Jim Al-Khalili

The Abbasid Caliphate begins in Baghdad around 762 CE. During this time the translation of Greek texts of philosophy, mathematics, and science was promoted on a large scale. This movement went on for about 200 years, until it seemed there was nothing more to be translated. Texts, or contributions, from India were also translated.

With very impressive and persuasive thoroughness, Jim Al-Khalili writes about the many scholars, and some of their 1000s of works that they produced, begining around 800 CE and continuing into the 10th century and beyond, and, later, in other places of the Islamic conquest. Not all of the translators and contributors were Arabs or Moslems. Among them were often Christians, Jews, and Persians, but most of them wrote in Arabic.

These scholars and proto-scientists produced 1000s of works in chemistry, medicine, algebra and trigonometry, physics, and astronomy and cosmology. Perhaps other fields as well. Some of these works eventually reached Europe and were translated into Latin by the 15th and 16th centuries. And some of these books became standard texts or reference books that were used for centuries.