CONTENTS

List of Plates

Prologue: The Scriptorium at the Süleymaniye

1 Science Before Science: Mesopotamia and Egypt

2 The Land of the Greeks

3 The Roads to Baghdad

4 ‘Abbasid Baghdad: The House of Wisdom

5 ‘Spiritual Physick’

6 From Baghdad to Central Asia

7 The Cure of Ignorance

8 Fatimid Cairo: The Science of Light

9 Ayyubid and Mamluk Cairo: Healing Body and Soul

10 Ingenious Mechanical Devices

11 Islamic Technology

13 From the Maghrib to the Two Sicilies: Arabic into Latin

14 Incoherent Philosophers

15 Maragha and Samarkand: Spheres Within Spheres

16 Arabic Science and the European Renaissance

17 Copernicus and his Arabic Predecessors

18 The Scientific Revolution

19 The Heritage of Islamic Science