S. Frederick Starr

Okay the maps are too few and bad. But the text is illuminating and clear. there are a few descents into folksiness like"Tamerlane and his hearties", but this is an important book. the author has the right end of the stick. Diversity on all levels, of religion, cultural norms, economic level, and political entities creates, mental clarity and impels the accumulation of knowledge in all its forms, scientific, artistic, and religious. Without dissent, and experiment we humans dwindle and eventually lose our ability to cope with our environment.
From 660 CE to 1450 CE the history of the intellectual community in The Central Asian Merry-go-round is laid out. There are heroes, such as ibn Sina and Biruni and the villainous al- Ghazali who closed down the wonderful show. From the origin of Zoroastrian religion in the 500's BCE to the invasion of Genghis Khan in 1220 CE, this area was in the forefront of intellectual ferment than brightened the whole world. The cause was the wonderful diversity created in an area whose struggle to maintain agriculture led to the cultivation of thought, and then whose high level of cross-fertilization of thought ellevated the world after the collapse of the Roman Empire. What is normally taken as Arabic Culture was in fact the Central Asian culture being written in Arabic as part of its ongoing journey.
Then, in the 1100's CE, the rise of the religious right powered by a devastating critique by al-Ghazali, a very gifted polemicist "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" led to the closing down of speculative thought first in Central Asia, and then in the Arabic West. The triumph of the Hanbalic traditional Islam and its Madrassa system "settled" questions of how Islam dealt with those niggling anomalies that, in Europe led to the Scientific revolution. It also closed off the growth of political diversity in favour of despotism, and exploration into complex capitalism, and physical art, such as the theatre. it was in European terms, the triumph of the Catholic counter reformation being complete with the end of Science in favour of revelation, history in favour of dogmatism, and despotism in instead of the growth of democracy, and Thomas Acquinas being the last word in religion. Forever.
The arguments are supported by four hundred pages of narrative history, and then ninety pages of good analysis.
For North Americans facing the triumph of the religious right, and the anti-intellectualism of the new century, this is a book deserving of close study, for this how a major light of civilization was snuffed out.
Diversity is progress, and knowledge is power.… (més)