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The House of Wisdom
- How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. 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 catch even a glimpse of the scientific advances coming from Baghdad, Antioch, or the cities of Persia, Central Asia, and Muslim Spain. There, philosophers, mathematicians, and astronomers were steadily advancing the frontiers of knowledge and revitalizing the works of Plato and Aristotle.
In the royal library of Baghdad, known as the House of Wisdom, an army of scholars worked at the behest of the Abbasid caliphs. At a time when the best book collections in Europe held several dozen volumes, the House of Wisdom boasted as many as 400,000. Even while their countrymen waged bloody Crusades against Muslims, a handful of intrepid Christian scholars, thirsty for knowledge, traveled to Arab lands and returned with priceless jewels of science, medicine, and philosophy that laid the foundation for the Renaissance.
In this brilliant, evocative book, Lyons shows just how much Western culture owes to the glories of medieval Arab civilization, and reveals the untold story of how Europe drank from the well of Muslim learning.
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The Discoverers
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- Narrated by: Christopher Cazenove
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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Why didn't the Chinese discover America? Why were people so slow to learn the earth goes around the sun? How and why did we begin to think of "species" of plants and animals? How, when, and why did people begin digging in the earth to learn about the past? How did the study of economics begin? These are but a few of the fascinating questions answered by Dr. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress Emeritus.
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One of my Top 10 Fav. Books!
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A.D. 381
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- By: Charles Freeman
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In A.D. 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of God; all other interpretations were now declared heretical.
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Dont pass it up
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The Renaissance
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If you want to discover the captivating history of the Renaissance, then pay attention.
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Monotone reader
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Seven Lies about Catholic History: Infamous Myths about the Church's Past and How to Answer Them
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The world hates the Church that Jesus founded, just as He said it would (John 15:18). It reviles her doctrines, mocks her moral teachings and invents lies about her history. In every age, but especially in our modern day, historians and political powers have distorted the facts about her past (or just made up novel falsehoods from scratch) to make the Church, and the civilization it fostered, seem corrupt, backward, or simply evil.
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excellent read
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The Cave and the Light
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The Cave and the Light reveals how two Greek philosophers became the twin fountainheads of Western culture, and how their rivalry gave Western civilization its unique dynamism down to the present.
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All of Western Philosphy Leads to Ayn Rand?!?
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The Rise and Fall of Alexandria
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Founded by Alexander the Great and built by self-styled Greek pharaohs, the city of Alexandria at its height dwarfed both Athens and Rome. It was the marvel of its age, legendary for its vast palaces, safe harbors, and magnificent lighthouse. But it was most famous for the astonishing intellectual efflorescence it fostered and the library it produced. If the European Renaissance was the "rebirth" of Western culture, then Alexandria, Egypt, was its birthplace.
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A good listen
- By Jeffrey on 10-02-08
By: Justin Pollard, and others
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A History of Judaism
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Judaism is one of the oldest religions in the world, and it has preserved its distinctive identity despite the extraordinarily diverse forms and beliefs it has embodied over the course of more than three millennia. A History of Judaism provides the first truly comprehensive look in one volume at how this great religion came to be, how it has evolved from one age to the next, and how its various strains, sects, and traditions have related to each other.
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Not easy to follow.
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Descartes' Bones
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On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely deathfar from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who washounded from country after country on charges of atheism?
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Philosophy of Modernity
- By Roger on 06-17-09
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The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire
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In this extensive sequel to Science Education in the Early Roman Empire, Dr. Richard Carrier explores the social history of scientists in the Roman era. Was science in decline or experiencing a revival under the Romans? What was an ancient scientist thought to be and do? Who were they, and who funded their research? And how did pagans differ from their Christian peers in their views toward science and scientists?
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This Book is a Bombshell
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Battling the Gods
- Atheism in the Ancient World
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Long before the European Enlightenment and the Darwinian revolution, which we often take to mark the birth of the modern revolt against religious explanations of the world, brave people doubted the power of the gods. Religion provoked skepticism in ancient Greece, and heretics argued that history must be understood as a result of human action rather than divine intervention. They devised theories of the cosmos based on matter and notions of matter based on atoms.
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We have a history as long and as rich as any relig
- By Glencannnon on 08-13-19
By: Tim Whitmarsh
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What listeners say about The House of Wisdom
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jan D. Leslie
- 02-05-18
Finally giving credit where it is due
An honest retelling of history. Rather that the Euro-centric versiin most of us were raised on.
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- Robert
- 11-26-11
Missing history
I read/listened to this book at roughly the same time as God Is Not Great. In the latter, Christopher Hitchens ruminates about the disparaging influences of all religions including Islam. The House of Wisdom does not posit to argue to the contrary as some reviewers would have us believe. The book is about, and perhaps sometimes incompletely, the influence of Arab and Muslim (not always the same people) thought, discovery and invention on the West prior to the Renaissance. Such influences included advances in most fields of intellectual endeavor: astronomy, mathematics, physics, engineering, navigation, geography, medicine, architecture, chemistry and finance to mention only some. Possibly because of my Catholic education, I don't remember so much about these Middle Eastern contributions and how some of an important, historically lost people of that area transformed Western Civilization . Maybe because they were never taught. If like me you would like to learn more, here is that opportunity.
For me, this was not an easy read/listen. Lyons was a former Reuters reporter in the Middle East for over 20 years. I expected something more accessible from a reporter. Instead, I found an intellectual paragon writing of people, places, times and events as alien to me as any subject could be. How valid all of it is I do not know. But it does seem well-researched and Jonathan Lyons does not seem to be an author with an agenda other than that of enlightening his readers. The book was for me a lot like Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, a book that I enjoyed even more. If this is a subject and time that interests you and particularly if you are a fan of history, I don't think that you will be disappointed.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Sarah Irene
- 10-15-16
You will be glad you read it.
Extremely eye-opening. A wealth of important history of which most Americans are completely unaware. I'm so glad I read (listened to) it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-18-21
Amazing Read
As a person who saw Arabic historical shows as a child it completes the question of why education did not flourish in some areas.
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- Moh 3aly
- 08-27-21
Excellent drawing from hidden sources
This book would have been 5 stars if the biography of the prophet was excluded, in no part of the book could the author be accused of what he generally accuses (and successfully so) the west of doing, except in the biography section where it was more a caricature with Arabia shown as no more than a jewish colony than anything else. The other criticism is of occidentalism, rather than orientalism, the author presupposes Muslim scientists used religion as an excuse to further pursue their fields, this is conjecture on the author's part and ought to be excised. The author however redeems himself around the Avicenna section. Of other notes, the destruction of the church of holy sepulchre was not done by THE caliph of the Abbassids, but by the shia caliph of Egypt Al-Hakim, and it was rebuilt before the crusades started. Otherwise the author draws from several sources that are otherwise hidden (intentionally) from occidental histories.
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Overall
- Mario La Femina
- 01-03-11
Repetitive
It repeats over and over the same concepts. Looks more as a collection of other books data, than a book itself. Not worthy.
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8 people found this helpful