How Islam Created the Modern World

larger image

How Islam Created the Modern World,
[A5+] Hardback with dust-jacket - 208 pages,
by Mark Graham,
Foreword by Prof. Akbar Ahmed,
Published by Amana Publications.

Description :

For several centuries, corresponding to the European Middle Ages, Baghdad was the intellectual center of the world. It was there that a huge community of translators and scholars appropriated in Arabic culture the knowledge of ancient civilisations and combined it with the cultural traditions and imperatives of the Islamic context to create a scientific, mathematical and philosophical golden age.

This golden age of Islam embraced all the products of human spirit practiced at that time, including different scientific disciplines, medicine, symbolic and artistic creation, social organisation and material culture, including productive branches of applied knowledge in industry, architecture and the making of instruments. These accomplishments were so numerous and original that they realised an unprecedented stage of civilisation and occupied a high rank in human creation. Being unique and at the front of inventivity, they gained the admiration of other peoples who were aware of the existence of these treasures. Hence a dynamic process of transmission was set up between the Muslim and the Latin worlds all over the Mediterranean coasts. This transfer process was progressive and uninterrupted for several centuries, mainly in the Andalus, but also in Sicily, Southern France and in the Middle East during the Crusades.

In other places of his book, Graham shows more concrete ways in which the West is indebted to Islam: A Mongol invasion of Europe was thwarted when Egypt's Mamluk army defeated the Mongols at ‘Ain Jalut, Palestine, in 1260. Imagine how different the West would be today if the Mongols had triumphed! As it turned out, the West never again faced the threat of Mongol invasion after ‘Ain Jalut, and the breather which thus provided Europe a chance to absorb what Graham terms "the other great gift of Islam—knowledge".

Table of Contents :

---Acknowledgements 9
---Foreword 11
---Introduction 15.

---Chapter [1] : Islam becomes an empire, 17
---Chapter [2] : The House of Wisdom, 37
---Chapter [3] : Hippocrates wears a turban, 51
---Chapter [4] : The great work, 63
---Chapter [5] : Beyond the Arabian nights, 77
---Chapter [6] : Islam's secret weapon, 97
---Chapter [7] : A medieval war on terror, 117
---Chapter [8] : The first World war, 139
---Chapter [9] : Raiders of the last library, 157
---Chapter [10]: Children of Abraham, children of Aristotle, 175.

---Appendix 1: What the Qur'an says, 183
---Appendix 2: Arabic words in English, 185
---Further reading, 189
---Index, : 197