Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology) Paperback – Illustrated, January 21, 2011

It was most interesting to read the review of this book by Toby Huff. As it happens, I came to read this book through my disappointment with Huff's book, The Rise of Early Modern Science. Having some knowledge regarding Islam and Islamic history Huff's book came across as biased and subjective, often tending towards Orientalism, particularly in the way he has transposed the conflict between science and the hierarchically imposed religious thought in the west to explain the decline of Islamic science.I sought out another point of view and was fortunate enough to find this book by George Saliba. I do have a scientific background, but am certainly neither a historian nor an astronomer, nevertheless I found the book to be anything but "dry". I simply could not put it down. He expressed his well-thought out alternate narrative convincingly, but was never imperious, suggesting future work that might or might-not support his own carefully-drawn conclusions.

"Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Saliba's book interview ran here as cover feature on October 23, 2009.

This book is DENSE, but Saliba was very thorough. Islamic science has been so overlooked by Western Society because looking at it for what it has really contributed to modern science would mean admitting that Western science has taken its lead from the Middle East. It's okay... we are SUPPOSED to learn from each other. Give Islamic science the props and historical significance it deserves!

I doubt that this will be the best review I’ve ever written but here goes.The books opening line is that “This is essentially an essay in historiography”. That isn’t quite what it says on the tin, the book's title is misleading. Furthermore only one science, astronomy, is dealt with. Nor do we learn much about the making of the European Renaissance. Much of this work is a critique of the established accounts of the history of Islamic science i.e. translations from the Greek under the Abbasid, a golden age followed by decline (caused by either the influence of al-Ghazali or later by the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258) and the passing of the baton to Europe. Saliba argues both that the translations must have started earlier than was supposed and that the decline began much later with important work being done into the 16th century. He clearly shows that Islamic scientists were no mere copiers but that they addressed the inconsistencies and weaknesses in the Ptolemaic model they inherited, without questioning geocentrism. This leads onto his argument concerning the influence of Islamic science on the European Renaissance. There are a number of innovations by Islamic scientists such as the Tusi Couple and the Urdi Lemma that were used by Copernicus. His argument is that somehow Copernicus was aware of their ideas even though there's no evidence he knew Arabic or that their work had been translated into Latin at the time. His argument is that someone who could speak Arabic and who knew Copernicus passed these ideas on. it is the final chapter of the book on "The Age of Decline" that I find the weakest. Basically he attributes both the rise of the West and the Islamic decline to the economic effects of the Age of Discovery. However if looting the wealth of others was sufficient to give rise to a Scientific Revolution then the Mongol mission to Mars would have landed long ago. There are many factors that Saliba ignores. Long before Columbus and Da Gama the West had invented spectacles (predecessor to the telescope and the microscope) and the mechanical clock with a metal escapement (which would enable things to begin to run like clockwork). It also invented the printing press with moveable metal type. And here Saliba is guilty of a serious sin of omission for he nowhere mentions that the Islamic empires, Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal specifically rejected printing for centuries. Another fact not mention is that the century before 1488/1492 The West had seen a surge in the foundation of universities. Two small gripes. Firstly, I think a book like this should have a glossary to which the general reader can refer. Secondly, we get the odd non-English language quote or reference that isn't translated. I don't think an author should assume knowledge by readers of a language other than that of the main text.

This monograph is a series of lectures which challenge the dominant narrative of the history of science culminating in the European Renaissance. The dominant narrative is that Muslim rulers in the early Abbasid period, under the influence of the Mu'tazila theological school (aka rationalists), sponsored a translation of Persian, Indian and Greek scientific and philosophical texts. When the ahl al-hadith theologians (aka irrationalists), who in large part adopted the Asha`ari theology and who are most identified later with Imam al-Ghazali, persuaded later Abbasi rulers to cease sponsoring rationalist theology, scientific production began to decline. Finally, the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258 CE combined with religious hostility to science to cement cessation of scientific thought and production throughout Muslim lands. In key contact points, such as Sicily and Andalus, Europeans were able to reacquire the Greek scientific and philosophical legacy which had been faithfully transmitted by Muslims, and these Europeans later used this legacy to develop the Renaissance. In short, Muslims were a storage facility for Europeans' intellectual property until the Europeans could complete renovations.Professor George challenges this narrative at the following points: * Scientific activity among Muslims and others in the areas Muslims ruled began during the period of the Bani Umayyah when the ruler `Abd al-Malik ordered that the state administration use Arabic rather than Syriac and Persian. Scientific activity was the result of competion for a more efficient beauracracy among the educated Arabic-speaking Muslims, Syriac speakers and Persian speakers. This persisted through the ascenscion to power of Bani al-`Abbas. Rulers' sponsorship of scholars was not the main force for scientific activity. * Byzantine science was not the source of scientific knowledge. Science was too far in decline in Byzantine-ruled areas. Scientists in Muslim-ruled areas used ancient Greek sources to supplement their scientific production. * Despite an attachment to an Aristotelian cosmology, scientists quickly discovered errors in the ancient Greek sources. In fact, as they translated them, they corrected them to correspond to their own astronomical observations and mathematical advances. In particular, by the 13th century, no serious astronomer wrote without challenging ancient Greek sources like Ptolemy's Almagest, and many advocated different mathematical models to predict the motions of the planets and stars. Furthermore, new instruments and observational methods were developed. * Most of the scientists were religious functionaries as well. Religion's main impact on astronomy was to force its seperation from astrology and to compel attempts to harmonize Aristotelian cosmology and Ptolemian physics. Theology compelled astronomers to deny the universe's objects divine attributes, and thus their motions had to be explained according to the mathematical laws of their models. In short, theology did not obstruct science. * While more research is needed, it is likely that Renaissance Europe pursued the knowledge contained in the astronomy books written in Arabic in the 13th century and that Europeans studied these books in Arabic and that Copernicus himself had access, through someone knowledgeable in Arabic, to the advances made by astronomers in Muslim-ruled areas in the 11th through 13th centuries CE. * The so-called age of decline in Muslim-ruled countries after the 13th century is filled with scientific production and advances. It was a decline only relative to the Europeans' tremendous advances brought about through their interactions with the Americas.Although Muzaffar Iqbal's review in Islam & Science (Volume 7, No 1, Summer 2009) criticizes the book for its pushing the analysis of the rise of the "ancient sciences" without enough evidence and for reiterating the revisionist perspective which serious scholars have adopted for decades, even he admits that the book brings coherence "to the revisionist narrative scattered across various papers and books over the last few decades ..." For me, and for most readers of this blog, this book is the simplest way to access this debate in the history of science, and it is an effective response to the continuing Western exceptionalist narrative.

much more scholarly than I anticipated, so that I quickly lost iNterest.

This book is extremely underrated, and doesn't seem to have sold too well. It was exactly what I was looking for: a lucid explanation of why Islamic Science grew and then contracted. I started investigating this when I became sceptical of the standard line that Ghazali somehow killed Islamic Science. In the preface of his book 'Incoherence', he spoke very clearly about how science and religion are not incompatible. His causality theories just seemed to me to be too abstruse to really have such a widespread effect on Islamic science. It felt like western orientalists essentially blaming Islam for the Muslim world's slowdown.This book confirmed my suspicions- and then some. Saliba show how Islamic science largely flourished post-Ghazali, before diving deep into the true causes of its slowdown. He describes how a confluence of factors, beginning really with the discovery of the New World, kickstarted Western Science, and started a relative decline of Islamic Science. He provides real insight in this area to give a thorough narrative that is entirely coherent.Along the way he gives his ideas, based on pretty rigorous scholarship, as to why Islamic Science began in the way it did. This was for me the weakest part of the book, as it seemed to put most of it down to purely social factors, whilst not giving real insight into why such social factors came to rise, ie: the deep-seated intellectual urge towards discovery in the Islamic years. He did discuss the need for astronomy to develop so that Muslims could pray at the right times, but it was much later on in the book. I wish he had moved that near the beginning so that the reader could have a much clearer idea of how the different religious, intellectual and social factors produced the original Islamic renaissance.After the beginning, he walks you through Ptolemaic science and how Islamic astronomers improved it. This is no mean feat, given how totally alien Ptolemaic science, with its physical impossibilities, is from our position today. I don't think he could have done this better.The book picks up as it goes along, with earlier sections being slightly tough-going. Get through these and you will be rewarded amply by the brilliant insights into the Western Renaissance, and its Islamic links. The tone is cautious but confident, and the length appropriate.If it reaches the right hands, this book may well change the narrative on the subject over the next century.PS: the popular history book 'Destiny Disrupted' by Tamim Ansary is excellent to read alongside this. It gives a broader account of why the Western Civilisation had a Renaissance when it did, which is complimentary to the in-depth research here.

Brilliant read. Gives a different perspective.

An informative and inspiring read by one of the best writers on the topic. A testimony to the interconnectivity of humankind.