• Complain

S. Frederick Starr - Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane

Here you can read online S. Frederick Starr - Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2013, publisher: Princeton University Press, genre: Romance novel. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

S. Frederick Starr Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
  • Book:
    Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Princeton University Press
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2013
  • Rating:
    4 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 80
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asias medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds--remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia--drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China.
Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earths diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the worlds greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America--five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia.

S. Frederick Starr: author's other books


Who wrote Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Lost Enlightenment Lost Enlightenment CENTRAL ASIAS GOLDEN AGE FROM THE ARAB - photo 1

Lost

Enlightenment

Picture 2

Lost

Enlightenment

CENTRAL ASIAS GOLDEN AGE

FROM THE

ARAB CONQUEST TO TAMERLANE

Picture 3

S. Frederick Starr

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2013 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,

Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

press.princeton.edu

Jacket art: Detail of ms. Elliott 339, fol. 95v, courtesy of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Starr, S. Frederick.

Lost enlightenment : Central Asias golden age from the Arab conquest to Tamerlane / S. Frederick Starr.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-15773-3 (hardcover)

1. Asia, CentralHistoryTo 1500. I. Title.

DS288.3.S73 2013

958.02dc23

2013013684

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro text with Archer display

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To strive for knowledge is the duty of every Muslim.

Saying or Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad,
recorded in the tenth century by the scholar
Abu Isa Muhammad Tirmidhi (824892)
from Tirmidh (Termez), and inscribed at the
entrance to the madrasa of Ulughbeg, ruler and
astronomer, Samarkand, ca 1420

Picture 4

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom.
And with all thy getting, get understanding.

Bible, Proverbs 4.7, King James Version

Contents

Picture 5

Illustrations

Picture 6

M APS

P LATES

Following page 292

F IGURES

Preface

Picture 7

This book was written not because I knew the answers to the questions it poses, or even because I had any particular knowledge of the many subjects and fields it touches upon, but because I myself wanted to read such a book. It is a book I would have preferred someone else to have written so I could enjoy reading it without the work of authorship. But no one else took up the assignment. Central Asia as yet has no chronicler comparable to Joseph Needham, the great historian from Clare College, Cambridge, whose magisterial, twenty-seven-volume Science and Civilization in China has no equal for any other people or world region. And so I backed into the task, in the hope that my work might inspire some future Needham from the region or from among scholars abroad.

The questions raised in this book became my constant companions for nearly two decades and over several scores of trips through every corner of the regiontrips that included scorching treks in the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan and being snowbound for nearly a week in the Pamirs at minus 40 degrees. Enormous, predigital piles of notes made entrance to my office a challenge that few chose to face. Now, with the volume done, I find myself saying, with Edward Gibbon in the preface to his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that I have ventured, perhaps too hastily, to commit to the press a work which in every sense of the word deserves the epithet of imperfect. And, by the way, I know all too well that I am no Gibbon.

It would be more than a stretch to say that I am qualified to have undertaken this book. But at least I can claim a long-term interest in the subject. The Persian world first opened to me when, at age eighteen, I met my freshman roommate at Yale, Hooshang Nasr, whose father was mayor of Tehran under the shah. Hoosh went on to become a dedicated medical doctor who loyally served his country. My first contact with the Turkic world began through archaeological work at Gordium in Turkey, where Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot, and eventually extended over several seasons spent mapping ancient roads in Anatolia. Neither of these links qualified me as an expert on anything, but from these early contacts to the present it has been natural for me to view both the Persian and the Turkish worlds as places inhabited by exceptionally interesting people, among whom are many good friends of mine.

The number of scholars and experts who have plowed the separate furrows of this book is staggering. It is fashionable in some quarters to fault Western and Russian scholars of the past two centuries for their orientalism. But without their painstaking research, the larger story of the intellectual effervescence of the Islamic East would never have become known to the world. This has been a thoroughly an international effort. Among the many participants are French savants like Jean Pierre Abel-Remusat, Farid Jabre, tienne de la Vaissire, and Frantz Grenet, not to mention the many authors of the publications, since 1922, of the Dlgation archologique franaise en Afghanistan. In Germany Heinrich Suter, Adam Mez, and others founded a tradition that continues today in the likes of Josef van Ess, Gotthard Strohmaier, and a host of younger scholars from both the former East and West, while the Czech Republic claims the great literary scholar Jan Ripka.

Across the English Channel, adventurers Armenius Vambery and Sir Aurel Stein, both of them immigrants from Hungary, sparked the imagination of the English-speaking world and of all Europe with the accounts of their explorations in Greater Central Asia. Then came linguists like Edward Granville Browne and translator Edward Fitzgerald, who together did much to bring the treasures of regional literature to broader notice. In the twentieth century the awesomely prolific Clifford Edmund Bosworth from Manchester wrote with insight on scores of topics essential to a book like this, while Georgina Herrmann and her colleagues extended this tradition into archaeology. Patricia Crone and other British scholars have advanced the study of many philosophers from the region, while E. S. Kennedy did authoritative work on the scientists. American scholars should also be noted, especially Richard N. Frye and Richard W. Bulliet, whose research on Nishapur, Bukhara, and the broader region inspired a generation of historians. Such gifted linguists and translators as Robert Dankoff and Dick Davis have opened windows on unknown or underappreciated masterpieces. Dimitri Gutas and other distinguished scholars have analyzed the writings of Farabi and other Central Asian thinkers who wrote in Arabic. Raphael Pumpelly and Fredrik Hiebert should also be saluted for their pioneering archaeological research that traced the first grain for bread to a site in what is now Turkmenistan. In addition to all these, a host of younger scholars, especially in Europe and the United States, are on the lip of transforming our understanding of the region and time.

Iranian scholarship also continues to make important contributions. Tehran scholars have undertaken the monumental task of locating, editing, and publishing the complete works of Ibn Sina and several other major thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. They are also conducting important research on the various traditions of Sufism. Persian scholarship also thrives in emigration, where it has given rise to such valuable productions as the New York-based

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane»

Look at similar books to Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane»

Discussion, reviews of the book Lost Enlightenment Central Asias Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.