Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Rewriting Medieval history :: Fausta's Blog

This morning Siggy forwarded his post, "What if the Muslim armies hadn't been stopped at the French border?". Siggy refers to Joan Acocella's review in the New Yorker of David Levering Lewis's book God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215.

Siggy points out,

It is true that the Arabs oversaw a great advances in medicine, mathematics, philosophy and science. There is no question they were to have a tremendous influence in the world as we know it, but that is not the story.
The Golden Age of the Arabs did not occur in Arab lands.
There would have been no Golden Age for Islam had Muslims not been in contact with Jews and Christians.This glaring truth still holds true today.

I must clarify that I have not read the book, but one statement in the book review stands out:

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