The House of Wisdom Read online

  SIGNIFICANT EVENTS

  These are some of the most important events surrounding the story of The House of Wisdom. By necessity, several of the dates are only approximate. More details can be found in the narrative that follows.

  622 Prophet Muhammad leads a migration of his followers from Mecca to Medina, the hijra. It marks the start of the Muslim epoch.

  632 The death of Muhammad.

  732 An Arab raiding party is defeated near Tours, in southern France, effectively ending Muslim penetration of Western Europe from Spain.

  750 The victory of the Abbasid revolution against the Umayyad caliphs.

  756 Abd al-Rahman proclaims himself master of Muslim Spain, known as al-Andalus.

  762 Caliph al-Mansur founds Baghdad as the new Abbasid capital.

  771 Hindu sages bring Sanskrit scientific texts to Baghdad.

  813–833 The reign of Caliph al-Mamun, an enthusiastic promoter of science and philosophy.

  825 Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi produces his famous star tables, the zij al~Sindhind.

  848 Albumazar (Abu Mashar) completes The Introduction to Astrology in Baghdad.

  948 Byzantines send Dioscorides’s medical encyclopedia to the Arab court of Cordoba.

  967 Gerbert d’Aurillac, the future Pope Sylvester II, is sent to Catalonia for advanced schooling in basic knowledge gleaned from the nearby Arabs.

  1009 Muslims destroy the Holy Sepulcher, aggravating tensions with the Christian world.

  1066 The Normans conquer England.

  Ca. 1080 Adelard of Bath is born.

  1088 John de Villula, Adelard’s future patron, is named bishop of Wells. He moves his see to Bath.

  1091 The Normans complete the conquest of Muslim Sicily.

  1092 Walcher of Malvern, an English cleric, carries out the first known Western experiment to improve astronomical predictions.

  1095 Pope Urban II issues the call to crusade in Clermont, France.

  1096 The People’s Crusade is crushed by Turkish troops at Civetot, near Constantinople, before the arrival of the main crusader host from Europe.

  1099 Forces of the First Crusade capture Jerusalem from the Muslims.

  Ca. 1100 Adelard leaves Bath to attend the cathedral school in Tours, France.

  1109 Adelard heads for the East, in pursuit of Arab learning.

  1114 Adelard is caught in an earthquake near Antioch, in modern-day Turkey.

  1126 First Latin introduction to Euclid’s Elements, attributed to Adelard of Bath.

  1138 King Roger II of Sicily invites al-Idrisi to create a new map of the world. The king also mints the first European coins to use the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.

  1142 Peter the Venerable commissions the first Latin translation of the Koran.

  1146 The Berber dynasty of the Almohads takes control of al-Andalus.

  1149 or 1150 Adelard completes On the Use of the Astrolabe. Some experts date it as early as 1142.

  Ca. 1152 The death of Adelard.

  1175 Gerard of Cremona completes a translation from the Arabic of the Almagest.

  1187 Saladin retakes Jerusalem from the crusaders.

  1210 Aristotle’s natural philosophy is officially banned at the University of Paris.

  1229 Frederick II takes control of Jerusalem after months of negotiations with the Arabs.

  Ca. 1230 Michael Scot’s translations of Averroes reach Paris.

  1236 Cordoba, once the imperial capital of al-Andalus, falls to Christian forces.

  1258 The Mongols, under Hulegu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, conquer and sack Baghdad.

  1259 Hulegu orders the construction of an observatory at Maragha, in what is today northwest Iran, and staffs it with prominent astronomers.

  1260 Nasir al-Din Tusi, director of the Maragha observatory, publishes an important revision to Ptolemaic astronomy. This appears in Copernicus’s work three centuries later.

  1270 Thomas Aquinas writes On the Eternity of the World, arguing that the Arab case for eternity cannot be disproved but must be rejected on the grounds of religious faith.

  1270 The church issues thirteen “condemnations” at the University of Paris. These ban the teaching of the Eternity of the World and God’s indifference to particulars. Most are ignored.

  1277 The bishop of Paris issues two hundred and nineteen condemnations, including some linked to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.

  1323 Thomas Aquinas is canonized.

  1453 Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Turks.

  1492 The Muslim kingdom of Granada, the last holdout in Spain, falls to the Christians.

  1497 Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama completes a voyage around Africa. He later reaches India, apparently with the help of a Muslim navigator.

  1543 The publication of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus, which proposes a sun-centered universe. The work includes two key Arab contributions.

  1592 An abridged Arabic version of al-Idrisi’s Map of the World is printed in the West.

  1633 Galileo is convicted of heresy for upholding Copernicus’s ideas.

  1687 Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation “completes” the Copernican revolution, establishing the preeminence of science in the Western world.

  LEADING FIGURES

  The following figures are central to the rise of Arab science and its reception in the West. Few are household names, and they are included here as a handy reference for the reader.

  Adelard of Bath—Early pioneer of Arab teaching who brought the wonders of geometry, astronomy, astrology, and other fields to the medieval West.

  Albumazar—Leading Arab authority on astrology who grounded his art in the natural philosophy of Aristotle. He was known in Arabic as Ja’far ibn Muhammad Abu Mashar al-Balkhi.

  Augustine of Hippo—Incorporated Greek philosophy into church teachings but de-emphasized its concerns with natural science. He died in 430 and was later recognized as a saint.

  Averroes—Muslim philosopher who exerted enormous influence on Western thought, primarily as a commentator on Aristotle. He was known in Arabic as Abu al-Walid ibn Rushd.

  Avicenna—Persian philosopher and physician. His influence on the West exceeded that of Averroes up until the mid-thirteenth century, while his import as an authority in medicine continued for several more centuries. In Arabic, Ibn Sina.

  Bede—Eighth-century monk and intellectual in northern England. His work was advanced for its time and place.

  Boethius—Sixth-century Roman patrician whose translations into Latin of Aristotle’s logical system, treatises on music, and a few basics of geometry provided much of European learning before the arrival of Arabic science and philosophy.

  Copernicus, Nicolaus—Polish astronomer whose proposition of a sun centered universe eventually replaced the notion that the earth stood at the center of all celestial movements.

  Frederick II—Holy Roman emperor and proponent of Arabic learning. He was the patron of Michael Scot and underwrote translations of Averroes, Avicenna, and Maimonides.

  Gerard of Cremona—The most prolific of the Latin translators based in Spain. He is credited with more than seventy translations from the Arabic.

  Gerbert d’Aurillac—Later Pope Sylvester II, Gerbert was exposed to basic Arab science and technology as a student in Spain. He spread his knowledge to the rest of Europe.

  Al-Ghazali—Muslim theologian whose masterful The Incoherence of the Philosophers posed a significant challenge to the philosophers on their own terms. Also known in the West as Algazel.

  Hermann of Carinthia—Major translator of Arab science. He contributed to the first translation of the Koran into Latin.

  al-Idrisi—Arab geographer and director of King Roger II of Sicily’s Map of the World project.

  Isidore of Seville—Medieval bishop and “encyclopedist” who taught that the world was flat, like “a wheel.”

  John de Villula—Named bishop of Wells in 1088, he moved his see to nearby Bath. He was the patron of Adelard.


  Al-Khwarizmi—Mathematician and astronomer, born in modern-day Uzbekistan. He was affiliated with the House of Wisdom, and his star tables and works on arithmetic, algebra, the astrolabe, and Arabic numerals greatly influenced the West.

  Al-Kindi—Called the first Arab philosopher, he sought to harmonize Plato and Aristotle.

  Leonardo of Pisa—Learned mathematics from the Arabs of North Africa and became one of the greatest mathematicians of the Western world. Also known as Fibonacci.

  Maimonides, Moses—Jewish scholar from al-Andalus. A contemporary of Averroes, he helped introduce Christian thinkers to the Arab philosophical tradition. His philosophical works were written in Arabic and were widely translated into Latin.

  Al-Mamun, Abdallah—Seventh Abbasid caliph. He took a direct interest in science and philosophy and actively promoted scholars at the House of Wisdom and elsewhere.

  Maslama al-Majriti—Eleventh-century Spanish mathematician and astronomer whose local edition of the Arab star tables Adelard later translated into Latin.

  Michael Scot—Translator of Averroes and the greatest public intellectual of his day. He served as science adviser and court astrologer to Frederick II.

  Peter the Hermit—Charismatic leader of the disastrous People’s Crusade. Peter survived and lived to see Jerusalem under crusader control.

  Ptolemy—Preeminent astronomer of classical times. His Almagest was the leading textbook on the heavens from the second century A.D. until its final overthrow in the Copernican revolution fourteen hundred years later.

  Robert of Ketton—Latin translator of Arab science. He worked on the first Western translation of the Koran, together with Hermann of Carinthia.

  Roger II—Norman king of Sicily, known as the “baptized sultan” for his adoption of Arab high culture at his court. He was the patron of al-Idrisi’s Map of the World.

  Roger Bacon—Thirteenth-century philosopher, scientist, and teacher. An early proponent of Arab philosophy, he once noted, “Philosophy is drawn from the Muslims.”

  Siger de Brabant—Leader of the secular philosophers at Paris. He was hounded by the Inquisition and was murdered at the papal court.

  Thomas Aquinas—Catholic theologian and philosopher who proposed a “truce” between faith and reason. He was canonized in 1323.

  Urban II—As pope, he proclaimed the First Crusade, in 1095.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Like the wandering intellectuals whose singular dedication helped bring Arab learning to the West, the present work, too, has had something of a peripatetic history. Little did I realize it at the time, but many of the ideas and thoughts that would find their way to these pages had been slowly crystallizing in my mind over the years and throughout my extensive travels, mostly in the Muslim world. Along the way, many people contributed to my effort to meld so many disparate elements into a comprehensive and meaningful narrative—far too many to thank individually. Yet they do all have my sincere thanks. Worthy of particular mention are Michelle Johnson, who read every word with care, insight, and good humor; Professor Paul Cobb, whose willingness to share his expertise and advice was invaluable; and Will Lyons, whose support and enthusiasm never wavered. Y. S. Chi gave the project a timely push. Needless to say, any shortcomings in the final text are solely the responsibility of the author.

  I would also like to thank the staff at the Library of Congress, particularly in the Main Reading Room, where much of the research for this book was carried out in grand old-world style. While the extensive collection was of course immensely helpful, I also took considerable inspiration from the depiction in the great dome over my head of Human Understanding as she lifts her veil and glances up gratefully from Finite Intellectual Achievement. Among the twelve figures she credits is an Arab bearing the knowledge of “Physics”—that is, natural philosophy. Fittingly, he stands next to the figure of the Christian Middle Ages.

  Further down the marble walls is an anonymous quotation that I adopted as a personal epigraph: “We taste the spices of Arabia yet never feel the scorching sun which brings them forth.” It seemed a useful commentary on the work at hand. Alas, none of the sixteen bronze statues of famous thinkers along the balustrade of the upper galleries represents any Arab or Muslim figures. Yet their absence, too, is part of the story.

  No acknowledgment would be complete without thanking Geneive Abdo, who first introduced me to the Muslim world, showed me its glories and wonders, and set me on a journey that continues to this day.

  Finally, I would like to thank my agent, Will Lippincott, for recognizing the destination from a long way off and my editors at Bloomsbury, Peter Ginna in New York and Michael Fishwick in London, for helping me get there.

  NOTES

  Prologue: Al-Maghrib/Sunset

  1. Walter the Chancellor’s The Antiochene Wars: A Translation and Commentary, trans. and ed. Thomas S. Asbridge and Susan B. Edington (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1999), 78.

  2. Ibid., 79.

  3. Ibid., 80–81.

  4. Adelard of Bath, Conversations with His Nephew: On the Same and the Different, Questions on Natural Science and On Birds, trans. and ed. Charles Burnett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 69–71.

  5. Steven Runciman, The First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 157.

  6. Ibn al-Qalanisi, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, trans. and ed. H. A. R. Gibb (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 89.

  7. Geneive Abdo, “America’s Muslims Aren’t as Assimilated as You Think,” Washington Post, Outlook sec., August 27, 2006.

  8. Aziz S. Atiya, Crusade, Commerce, and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 220.

  9. Roger Bacon, Opus Majus, trans. Robert Belle Burke (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1927), 815.

  10. Brian Stock, “Science, Technology, and Economic Progress in the Early Middle Ages,” in Science in the Middle Ages, ed. David C. Lindberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 12.

  11. Francesco Petrarch, Letters of Old Age, trans. Aldo S. Bernard, Saul Levin, and Reta A. Bernard (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 2: 472.

  12. In this view, salient geopolitical, environmental, and economic factors are generally ignored. For a thoughtful analysis of the decline of Muslim science and innovation, see Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, “Factors Behind the Decline of Islamic Science After the Sixteenth Century,” in Islam and the Challenge of Modernity: Historical and Contemporary Contexts, ed. Sharifah Shifa Al-Attas (Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation, 1996), 351–89. The notion that the faith was ultimately antithetical to science has come under increasing attack by historians of Islamic science. See the works of George Saliba, most recently, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007); Roshdi Rashed; A. I. Sabra; and Ahmad Dallal.

  Chapter I: The Warriors of God

  1. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, quoted in The First Crusades: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants, trans. and ed. August C. Krey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1921), 70.

  2. Albert of Aix, “Historia Hierosolymita,” in First Crusades, Krey, 48.

  3. Guibert of Nogent, “Gesta Dei per Francos,” in Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History, vol. I, trans. and ed. Dana C. Munro (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1895), 20.

  4. There is no extant text of Urban’s speech in Clermont. However, a number of medieval chronicles contain accounts, including some drawn from those present. This version is from Fulcher of Chartres, “Gesta francorum Jerusalem expugnantium,” in A Source Book for Medieval History, ed. J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Scribners, 1905), 517. See also Fulcher of Chartres: Chronicle of the First Crusade, trans. Martha Evelyn McGinty (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1941), 16.

  5. Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 77–78.
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br />   6. Ibid., 47–48.

  7. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 4–5.

  8. Ibid., 7.

  9. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, quoted in E. O. Blake and C. Morris, “A Hermit Goes to War: Peter and the Origins of the First Crusade,” Studies in Church History 22 (1985): 90.

  10. “Le Chanson d’Antioch,” in First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source Materials, ed. Edward Peters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 302–06.

  11. Annales Rosenvaldenses, quoted in Blake and Morris, “Hermit Goes to War,” 93.

  12. Guibert of Nogent, in Translations and Reprints, Munro, 20.

  13. Albert of Aix, Historia Hierosolymita, in First Crusades, Krey, 56.

  14. Albert of Aix, Historia Hierosolymita, quoted in Norman Daniel, The Arabs and Medieval Europe (London: Longman, 1979), 123.

  15. The Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson, in The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, trans. and ed. Shlomo Eidelberg (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 21.

  16. Eidelberg, The jews, 4.

  17. Anonymous of Mainz, in Eidelberg, The Jews, 110.

  18. Eidelberg, The Jews, 5–6.

  19. Solomon bar Simson, in Eidelberg, The Jews, 30.

  20. Atiya, Crusade, 58 (see Prologue, n. 8).

  21. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, in Krey, First Crusades, 70.