The Lost Enlightenment
Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 2:09 pm
I wonder if there is a huge Persian shaped gap in our understanding of the monotheisms, for example the founder Zoroastrianism seems to have been, like Trotsky, air brushed out of history!
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10064.htmlAt first the Arabs had deceived themselves into thinking that the conquest of Central Asia would be easy. Their smooth entry into Khurusan and the success of their early raids across the Oxus for booty had led them to undertake more ambitious campaigns. But these efforts ended in disaster. Worse, they prompted both dissident members of the Arab administration and indigenous leaders from Central Asia once more to take up arms against the Caliphate.
[...]
Such fears led to the appointment in 705 of a new viceroy for the region, a hardened general named Qutayba.
[...]
Qutayba was a master at the technical use of terror. In his early campaign against Paykand, for example, he slaughtered the entire force of defenders and took all the women and children into captivity. When he finally broke into Samarkand after laying siege to it over four years, he took thirty-nine thousand people as slaves.
[...]
Qutayba tore down the main Zoroastrian temple at Samarkand and melted down its treasure, repeating the process in other cities.
[...]
Of more lasting consequence was Qutayba's systematic destruction of books and religious literature. In Bukhara he destroyed an important library, but in Kath, the capital of Khwarazm (near the Aral Sea in present-day Uzbekistan), he succeeded in wiping out an entire literature in the Khwarazmian language, including works on astronomy, history, mathematics, genealogy, and literature. Writing in the eleventh century, the great scientist Biruni rued this destruction as a crime against an ancient culture. Qutayba's special animus was directed against Zoroastrianism. Besides killing various writers from this faith, he obliterated much of the corpus of Zoroastrian theology and letters, a tragic loss to civilisation
In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's 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 earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's 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.
Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.
S. Frederick Starr is founding chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a research and policy center affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. A past president of Oberlin College and the Aspen Institute, he began his career in classical archaeology, excavating at Gordium in modern Turkey and mapping the Persian Royal Road.
Review:
"Lost Enlightenment is a remarkable and accessible scholarly tour de force."--David Morgan, Times Literary Supplement
"Starr argues rightly that the region's brilliant culture rested on a highly cosmopolitan mix of ethnic groups, languages and religions; a long, rich pre-Islamic intellectual tradition (mainly Buddhist); and prosperity. . . . Starr shines in his core chapters, where he presents the great achievements of the Central Asian philosopher-scientists at a time when their homeland was the creative intellectual capital of the world."--Nature
"Starr is that rare scholar with the horsepower to write about the medieval culture of this vast region that is bounded by Persia to the west, and China to the east, and India to the southeast. . . . An indispensable title for scholars, this lively study should prove equally compelling to serious lay readers with an interest in Arabic and medieval thought."--Library Journal, starred review
"In this graceful, luxuriant history, Starr recovers the stunning contributions of Central Asia scientists, architects, artists, engineers, and historians during the four centuries that began just before the Arab onslaught of the eight century and lasted until the Mongol siege in the thirteenth century. . . . The book offers a lucid exploration of the era's intricate philosophical and theological debates and a succinct depiction of its poetry and art, enhanced by many illustrations."--Foreign Affairs