The House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons

First "live" post! I've started out by posting on my recent reads, and I still have a few more, but this one I finished today. Okay, here comes the real post:
Warning first: this book is not for the casual reader. Only 201 pages, but oftentimes thick in the other sense. That said, a good book if you're interested in how knowledge and common knowledge get passed down through the ages.
The book traces how the Arabs held down the fort of knowledge whilst the silly Europeans were struggling in their dark ages. Most of us know that algebra comes from the Arabic al-jebr/al-jabr, and chemistry comes through alchemy, or al-kimiya, but few realise what this means, and how pretty much everything there was to know would have died with the Greeks if it weren't for the Arabs holding the reins for a bit.
A fascinating development of how our branches of knowledge developed and matured, and why certain branches were favored and others ignored. One of my astronomy textbooks mentioned that the only thing astrology ever contributed to astronomy was a convenient set of subscripts for the planets, but in a larger sense astrology was essential to astronomy. Dates and calendars were important, and much work on astronomy may not have been undertaken if not for the fact that it was thought that the planets actually influenced human lives directly. Many other branches of knowledge have similar interesting entries in their backstory.
The book takes pains to mention that it was Arabic learning, not Muslim, and the West generally, not just Christendom, that were interacting, but the important parts of the story seem to always revolve around religious themes. In this respect the book is a cautionary tale of what can go bad when religion has a check on science, but not the other way round. In fact, the story arc seems to be that early on, Christianity disfavored science while Arab (/Muslim) science thrived, and the balance shifted to where we largely are today when that situation reversed. This quote sums up the problem: "One medieval Latin scribe appended his own succinct commentary to a fresh manuscript copy of Albumazar's great astrological textbook: 'Finished, with praise to God for his help and a curse on Mahomet [Muhammad] and his followers.'" But the whole book was originally researched, compiled, and written by one of his followers! Argh!
All in all an informative read, and makes you appreciate that all of this knowledge finally made it with us to the twenty-first century, instead of us needing to rediscover it all from scratch. Even if it only just barely made it.