{ "item_title" : "The House of Wisdom", "item_author" : [" Shane Larson "], "item_description" : "The Library of Alexandria burned. The books did not.A great deal of what Alexandria held survived-not in Greek, and not in Europe. It survived because a dynasty of caliphs in a new round city on the Tigris decided, as state policy, to buy every book they could find and pay to have it turned into Arabic. For two centuries the Abbasid court funded translation the way modern states fund defense research. Diplomatic missions to Constantinople came home with crates of Greek manuscripts written into the treaty terms. Translators were paid by the weight of the finished manuscript. Wealthy families competed to endow the work the way later families endowed cathedrals.The men doing it were not copyists. Hunayn ibn Ishaq hunted through three countries for manuscripts of a single Galen text, comparing copies and flagging corruptions-textual criticism four centuries before Europe attempted it. And the books did not sit still once translated. Al-Khwarizmi turned Indian numerals and Greek geometry into algebra: a general procedure, not a clever trick, and the reason we still say algorithm. Ibn al-Haytham darkened a room, cut a pinhole, and settled by experiment how vision actually works. Al-Razi wrote down what happened to his patients-including the ones who died.Then, in February 1258, a Mongol army took Baghdad. The story says the Tigris ran black with ink. This book takes that story seriously enough to check it-and what can actually be established is stranger, and more useful, than the legend.What you'll learn: Why a dynasty spent two hundred years of state money buying and translating booksHow Greek science physically traveled from Alexandria to Baghdad-and who carried itWhat paper did to the price of a book, and why that mattered more than any single geniusWhat Arabic scholarship added: algebra, experimental optics, clinical case records, trigonometryWhat really happened in 1258, and what the sources for the river of ink actually sayHow the books went west through Toledo, and why algebra, alcohol and zenith are the receiptThis book is for you if: You finished a book about the Library of Alexandria and wanted to know where the books wentYou have heard the phrase Islamic Golden Age and never seen it described concretelyYou want the history of science before the Scientific Revolution, told through peopleYou prefer history that checks its legends instead of repeating themScroll up and start the story of how knowledge actually survives-one copy at a time.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/890/714/9798907140509_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "18.99", "online_price" : "18.99", "our_price" : "18.99", "club_price" : "18.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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