Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane Paperback – Illustrated, June 2, 2015

This book is the culmination of a lifetime of study by the Princeton professor who wrote it, had the benefit of knowing many exotic languages, and so was almost uniquely qualified to write it. It is THOROUGHLY sourced.It is an eye-opener in portraying the reasons and geography why a brilliant urban civilization grew up around AD 1000 in the Silk Road cities of Central Asia (mostly Persian, not Arab, in ethnic/intellectual origins), achieved great advances (esp. in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other sciences, but yes--the poet Omar Khayyam also was there), paved the way (cast the seeds) in some ways for Europe's own Renaissance a few centuries later, and then declined in the face of conservative religious Islamic reaction to its pursuit of knowledge outside the literal tenants of the Koran. The book sometimes gets too much into the weeds or (as regards to mathematical/astronomical achievements) too scientifically impenetrable to the layperson, but despite all that it is a window on a great story most of us do not know and of the contributions to knowledge and thought that that civilization produced and upon which, in many cases, European civilization later built. It is a significant world history chapter and Prof. Starr has provided what I suspect will long be the definitive account. Again, you'll find a number of dry passages, but the overall theme and revelations are highly worthwhile.

This book is an exciting discussion of the growth of science and philosophy in what is now an obscure area in Central Asia. How it happened, how it lasted, and what contributed to its destruction is fascinating. Read through the Dramatis Personae section of the first chapter, and expect to be drawn into the book.Our knowledge of this period is limited by the repeated destruction of libraries and other records over the centuries. But there has been a great deal of scholarly study, furthered by the gradual discovery of records excavated from ruins, and the translation of books to make them more widely available. So the author emphasizes in the preface that much remains to be learned.“It is no exaggeration to say that strife within the community of Islam, the umma, the struggle of Suni versus Shiite, was more than anything else responsible for the closing of the Muslim mind in Central Asia.” The chapters showing how this happened, and the great minds involved in the retreat from reason toward doctrinal conformity, are a testimony to what might have happened. And it is a warning of the dangers today of the campaign by fundamentalists against knowledge in favor of biblical literalism, faith vs. evidence. It has happened before.In the last paragraph of the book, the author expands from history to philosophy. “Meanwhile, it is well for the rest of the world, both East and West, to reflect on the fact that a region that some persist in viewing as marginal and backward was, over a number of centuries, the pivot of the political and economic world and the center of science, philosophy, and intellectual life on the Eurasian land mass. Is it not far wiser, then, to ask how this great movement of culture and ideas arose and endured as long as it did than to focus narrowly on its demise?”

This is a very interesting book, but not one to buy on Kindle. The Kindle copy is of very poor quality compared to a hard copy, for the book contains many illustrations and some maps, but in the Kindle copy many of the illustrations are black and it says 'To view this see the hard copy' which sounds like a rip off, and something that is somewhat dishonest. How can one see the hard copy unless you buy or borrow a copy? What is the point of buying a book where parts are missing? Furthermore, the book refers to plate so and so, but how do you find the platefrom the text, and going to the menu and trying to find the location of the plates, there is nothing. So while I would recommend this book as an excellent overview with some detail of the caldron of Central Asia at the time when the Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews and Muslims met, and where the age of Enlightenment preceeded the european equivalent by a thousand years, the is NOT A BOOK TO BUY ON KINDLE.

I am not an expert on central Asia or on Islam. Therefore my review will be short and to the point. Most books on the history of this area that I have encountered in the past have focused entirely or almost entirely on the political history of this area. Perhaps the best of the books which I have read previously was "The Empire of the Steppes," by Rene Groussset. Such books as these are necessary because without a sense of the political order, or lack thereof, it is difficult to have any appreciation of the culture of these ancient peoples. On the other hand, a history confined to wars, kings, and khans deprives the reader of the value of reading history in the first place, which is to gain an understanding of the past in its totality. With this in mind, I believe that "Lost Enlightenment" fills an important gap in the histories of central Asia and Iran. It is an intellectual history of the centuries immediately following the Arab conquest. It is well written and therefore a pleasure to read. The author convincingly makes his point that this era was indeed a flowering of culture. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has any interest at all in this part of the world.