Aladdin’s Lamp/ A Book Review
Title of the book: Aladdin’s Lamp, How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World
Author: John Freely. Was born in Brooklyn, NY, and joined the U.S. Navy in WW II. Taught physics and history of science since 1960 in Bosphorus University in Istanbul, with intervals in New York, Boston, London, Athens and Venice. He is the author of more than forty books.
Published in 2009, and of 300 pages.
Ever wonder why did Moslems have a civilization in the 9th, through the 13th century? What was their motives and what provoked their scientific advancements? And what was the reason of their decline afterwards? Why Europe of the medieval ages picked up where Moslem’s left and who or what provoked them? And who were the pioneers from Antiquity till present day, who put science (and philosophy) on its right path? And why Europe flourished after that?
All those questions and more; the relationship between religion, metaphysics, superstition, astrology, magic, astronomy and modern science, all in one bundle presented in this book of no more than three hundred paged, which makes it truly a magnificent work.
The book is an encyclopedia of information in a story-telling style that makes it very interesting, and not a bit boring. It does not only touch base with listing such information, but rather goes deep into the lives and circumstances, or environments of his actors to deduce his own conclusions bequeathed by empirical evidences and referenced by well documented sources. Actually, the book relieves the pressure off researchers’ backs, the ones who are interested in these eras, when it provides detailed information of certain events that would help in creating a wider perception.
In short; the book is a summary of events presented chronologically in a beautiful story-telling style.
I will present here two passages from the book only to give an idea:
“Islamic astronomy was dominated by Ptolemy, whose works were translated into Arabic and also disseminated in summaries and commentaries. The earliest Arabic translation of the Almagest is by Al-Hajjaj ibn Matar in the first half of the ninth century. The most popular compendium of Ptolemaic astronomy was that of al-Farghani (d.ca.870) produced a set of astronomical tables in which he introduced the trigonometric functions of the sine, cosine, and tangent, which do not appear in Ptolemy’s work.”
“Al-Kindi’s ideas on visual perception, which differed from those of Aristotle, together with his studies of the reflection of light, laid the foundation for what became, in the European renaissance, the law of perspective. His studies of natural science convinced him of the values of rational thought, and as a result he was the first noted Islamic philosopher to be attacked by fundamentalists Muslim clerics. His Letter on Banishing Sadness says that the cure for melancholia is applying oneself to the only enduring object, the world of the intellect.”
I can go on, the subject is very dense and the author did an excellent job to bring history to life and show its misgivings.
I advice all, especially Muslims to read it for it bears a lot of lessons we can learn from.
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