Light from the East by John Freely

Light from the East by John Freely

Long before the European Renaissance, while the western world was languishing in what was once called the 'Dark Ages', the Arab world was ablaze with the knowledge, invention and creativity of its Golden Age. This is the story of how Islamic science, which began with the translation of Greek manuscripts into Arabic in eighth-century Baghdad, preserved and enhanced the knowledge acquired from Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge was carried from Samarkand and Baghdad to Cordoba and beyond, influencing western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas and Copernicus and helping to inspire the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance. John Freely tells this spellbinding story against a background of the melting pot of cultures involved and concludes with the decline of Islam's Golden Age, which led the West to forget the debt it owed to the Muslim world and the influence of medieval Islamic civilisation in forging the beginnings of modern science.

'John Freely is a virtuoso of cultural narrationHis Light from the East stands as a towering achievement that chronicles the process of awakenings in the Western world under the impetus of Islamic sciences. Thanks to its easy flowing style, it sheds light on how the Muslims conveyed the scientific heritage of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece as well as their own discoveries and inventions to the Western world.' - Talat S. Halman, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters at Bilkent University; 'John Freely's Light from the East presents a thorough and wide-ranging account of pre-Islamic and Islamic science as well as of the considerable debt that Western scientific thinking owes to the Arabs.' - Robert Irwin, Middle East editor, Times Literary Supplement, author of 'The Arabian Nights: A Companion'

John Freely was born in New York and joined the US Navy at the age of seventeen, serving with a commando unit in Burma and China during the last years of World War II. He has lived in New York, Boston, London, Athens and Istanbul and has written over forty travel books and guides, most of them about Greece and Turkey. He is author of The Grand Turk, Storm on Horseback, Children of Achilles, The Cyclades, The Ionian Islands (all I.B. Tauris), Crete, The Western Shores of Turkey, Strolling through Athens, Strolling through Venice (all Tauris Parke Paperbacks) and the bestselling Strolling Through Istanbul.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781848854529
ISBN 10	1848854528
Title	Light from the East
Author	John Freely
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2010-12-16
Number of pages	264
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.