Free The House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons Page A

of Faith in the West and the seemingly unstoppable triumph of Reason.

SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
    These are some of the most important events surrounding the story of The House of Wisdom . By necessity, several of the dates are only approximate. More details can be found in the narrative that follows.
622
Prophet Muhammad leads a migration of his followers from Mecca to Medina, the hijra . It marks the start of the Muslim epoch.
632
The death of Muhammad.
732
An Arab raiding party is defeated near Tours, in southern France, effectively ending Muslim penetration of Western Europe from Spain.
750
The victory of the Abbasid revolution against the Umayyad caliphs.
756
Abd al-Rahman proclaims himself master of Muslim Spain, known as al-Andalus.
762
Caliph al-Mansur founds Baghdad as the new Abbasid capital.
771
Hindu sages bring Sanskrit scientific texts to Baghdad.
813–833
The reign of Caliph al-Mamun, an enthusiastic promoter of science and philosophy.
825
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi produces his famous star tables, the zij al~Sindhind .
848
Albumazar (Abu Mashar) completes The Introduction to Astrology in Baghdad.
948
Byzantines send Dioscorides’s medical encyclopedia to the Arab court of Cordoba.
967
Gerbert d’Aurillac, the future Pope Sylvester II, is sent to Catalonia for advanced schooling in basic knowledge gleaned from the nearby Arabs.
1009
Muslims destroy the Holy Sepulcher, aggravating tensions with the Christian world.
1066
The Normans conquer England.
Ca. 1080
Adelard of Bath is born.
1088
John de Villula, Adelard’s future patron, is named bishop of Wells. He moves his see to Bath.
1091
The Normans complete the conquest of Muslim Sicily.
1092
Walcher of Malvern, an English cleric, carries out the first known Western experiment to improve astronomical predictions.
1095
Pope Urban II issues the call to crusade in Clermont, France.
1096
The People’s Crusade is crushed by Turkish troops at Civetot, near Constantinople, before the arrival of the main crusader host from Europe.
1099
Forces of the First Crusade capture Jerusalem from the Muslims.
Ca. 1100
Adelard leaves Bath to attend the cathedral school in Tours, France.
1109
Adelard heads for the East, in pursuit of Arab learning.
1114
Adelard is caught in an earthquake near Antioch, in modern-day Turkey.
1126
First Latin introduction to Euclid’s Elements , attributed to Adelard of Bath.
1138
King Roger II of Sicily invites al-Idrisi to create a new map of the world. The king also mints the first European coins to use the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.
1142
Peter the Venerable commissions the first Latin translation of the Koran.
1146
The Berber dynasty of the Almohads takes control of al-Andalus.
1149 or 1150
Adelard completes On the Use of the Astrolabe . Some experts date it as early as 1142.
Ca. 1152
The death of Adelard.
1175
Gerard of Cremona completes a translation from the Arabic of the Almagest .
1187
Saladin retakes Jerusalem from the crusaders.
1210
Aristotle’s natural philosophy is officially banned at the University of Paris.
1229
Frederick II takes control of Jerusalem after months of negotiations with the Arabs.
Ca. 1230
Michael Scot’s translations of Averroes reach Paris.
1236
Cordoba, once the imperial capital of al-Andalus, falls to Christian forces.
1258
The Mongols, under Hulegu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, conquer and sack Baghdad.
1259
Hulegu orders the construction of an observatory at Maragha, in what is today northwest Iran, and staffs it with prominent astronomers.
1260
Nasir al-Din Tusi, director of the Maragha observatory, publishes an important revision to Ptolemaic astronomy. This appears in Copernicus’s work three centuries later.
1270
Thomas Aquinas writes On the Eternity of the World , arguing that the Arab case for eternity cannot be disproved but must be rejected on the grounds of religious faith.
1270
The church issues thirteen “condemnations” at the University of Paris. These ban the teaching of the Eternity of the