EUROPE'S DEBT TO PERSIA FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN TIMES

This is one of the most remarkable and enlightening books I have ever read. Its scholarship is meticulous and comprehensive and although the book is over 1,000 pages long, it is never heavy or abstruse. It covers in minute detail the period from 546 BC to 1807 AD and tells the story of how outstanding scholarly Persian kings (from Cyrus the Great onwards) and noblemen from a handful of aristocratic families rescued, safeguarded and developed the religious and intellectual heritage from both Judea and Greece. They set up wonderful universities as early as the sixth century AD -- long before those of Europe. They welcomed there the great scholars and teachers fleeing persecution in Alexandria (burning of the great library there in 415 AD), Greece (closing of the Platonic Academy) and Constantinople (under the Emperor Justinian), and honoured them by giving them teaching posts in these universities.

The Greek and Byzantine scholars brought with them the priceless manuscripts they rescued as their former academies were destroyed or closed down, including many from the great library in Alexandria and those, in that library, that had been rescued from Persepolis just before it was burned to the ground by Alexander the Great. The Persian kings fostered the teaching of every kind of science, including in particular astronomy, mathematics, engineering and medicine. They welcomed and developed further the scientific legacy of the greatest of the Greeks: Plato and Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes and many others whose work was repressed and lost to Christian Europe until the early twelfth century.

This book restores a huge missing section of the history of ideas and shows how the rich philosophical, scientific and medical legacy originating with Zoroaster in Persia and the later Greek philosophers was preserved for European civilisation through the brilliance as well as the immense courage and resilience of Persian scholars and universities (who managed to survive both the Mongol and Turkish invasions). I am absolutely dumb-struck with admiration and gratitude for what this book offers. It should be included in any course on the history of ideas, on medieval history and on the so-called Dark Ages. It shows that Persia was the vital link between Ancient Greece and the science that developed in Europe from the sixteenth century. Copernicus, Kepler and Newton were able to read the texts on astronomy and mathematics that had been translated from Persian into Arabic and then into Latin. What a story!