Uncovering Writing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A great read covering a large amount of information in an accessible manner. There are many books out there that will cover individual sections of Moller’s work in more depth, but for such breadth, she really nails it. The framing device of the three texts (Euclid’s Elements, Ptolemy’s Almagest, and Galen’s medical oeuvre) was almost not necessary for me as I was loving moving about the world following the development, preservation and creation of new knowledge. She moves from Alexandria to Baghdad, Córdoba, Toledo, Salerno, Palermo, and Venice, knitting together a great history. To me, the key statement of this book comes near the end of the last chapter: “Each of the cities we have visited in this book had its own particular topography and character, but they all shared the conditions that allowed scholarship to flourish: political stability, a regular supply of funding and of texts, a pool of talented, interested individuals and, most striking of all, an atmosphere of tolerance and inclusivity towards different nationalities and religions” (ch. 9).

Whenever I read statistics like this, I feel I have to quote them and mourn a little: “In the late fifth century, a man called Stobaeus compiled a huge anthology of 1,430 poetry and prose quotations. Just 315 of them are from works that still exist—the rest are lost. Science fared a little better, but, still, important works like Galen’s On Demonstration, Theophrastus’ On Mines and Aristarchus’ treatise on heliocentric theory (which might have changed the course of astronomy dramatically if it had survived) all slipped through the cracks of time” (preface).

And, as a collector, I put my head in my hands when reading the following from Córdoba in the 8th century: ‘However, this wasn’t good news for scholars—one complained that, when a book he had been seeking for months finally turned up in an auction, he found himself caught in a bidding war. The price went so high that he had to give up and lost the book; his disappointment turned to anger when the man who outbid him admitted that he had no idea what it was about, he was simply, “anxious to complete a library which I am forming, which will give me repute amongst the chiefs of the city.” The age-old squabble between wealthy dilettantes and penniless scholars had reached al-Ándalus.’ (ch. 4).

The problem of organized religion reared its heads many times in this book. One that particularly struck hard was: ‘In 1492, the last Muslim stronghold, the beautiful city of Granada, fell to the Christians. The terms agreed were generous and enlightened: Spanish Muslims would be allowed to live in peace, practise their religion and follow their own customs. But these hopeful beginnings were soon buried under a wave of intolerance and persecution. There was no place for alien cultures or religions in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella; they expelled thousands of Jews, they oppressed and exiled Muslims, and began the process of destroying 700 years of Muslim civilization. The culmination came in 1499, when the fanatical cleric Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros arrived in Granada intent on converting the population and removing any vestiges of Islamic culture. He took the contents of the city’s libraries and built an enormous bonfire in the main square of the city, burning somewhere in the region of two million books—a “cultural holocaust” based on the principle that, “to destroy the written word is to deprive a culture of its soul, and eventually of its identity.” Proclamations followed which banned writing in Arabic and prohibited the ownership of Arabic books. Ximénez de Cisneros was so successful that, by 1609, only a tiny number of Arabic manuscripts existed in Spain. The Catholic victory was complete, “only the empty palaces and converted mosques remained as mute witnesses to the tragedy that had befallen the once flourishing Islamic civilization of Al Andalus’ (ch. 4).

Moller notes the fall of scholarship in the Muslim world during the Renaissance era, partly due to the fracturing of the Arab world into separate political entities which diluted funds for research and opportunities to collaborate, partly due to loss of funds when the Age of Exploration opened up new routes to the East that didn’t include the old Silk Road, partly due to the slow adoption of the printing press for the Arabic language, and also partly due to the increasing religious conservatism in the Muslim world. However, she writes ‘But it is less easy to understand why the legacy of Islamic science has been largely forgotten in Europe. Given the remarkable contribution they made, scholars like al-Khwarizmi and al-Razi should be household names, like Leonardo da Vinci and Newton, but, even today, few people in the Western world have heard of them. How did this happen? Part of the blame must lie with the humanists, whose idolization of Greek science led them to disregard many scientists of the intervening period. Medieval translators were also guilty of “Latinizing” the books they translated and failing to credit the original Muslim authors. And, as Europe grew in wealth and power, and began to build empires, it gained the cultural upper hand, too. As a result, a narrative developed that marginalized Arabic learning and pushed it back into the past’ (ch. 9).