Want to know what books Amira Bennison recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Amira Bennison's favorite book recommendations of all time.
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The influence of classical antiquity on the religious disciplines, theology, mysticism and law of Islam cannot be overestimated. This work demonstrates the significance of the classical heritage by drawing together a great range of literary renderings, paraphrases, commentaries and imitations, as well as independent Islamic elaborations. Professor Rosenthal's collection includes the work of early authors, authors of the Golden Age and later writers who imitated their works. The Classical Heritage in Islam reveals that the Muslim adoption of and dependence on classical texts was not... more The influence of classical antiquity on the religious disciplines, theology, mysticism and law of Islam cannot be overestimated. This work demonstrates the significance of the classical heritage by drawing together a great range of literary renderings, paraphrases, commentaries and imitations, as well as independent Islamic elaborations. Professor Rosenthal's collection includes the work of early authors, authors of the Golden Age and later writers who imitated their works. The Classical Heritage in Islam reveals that the Muslim adoption of and dependence on classical texts was not blind imitation or a casual compounding of traditions, but rather an original synthesis and therefore a unique achievement. less 
Amira BennisonWestern civilisation has tended to leave out Islam, even though the Islamic world inspired Europe as much as Greece and Rome did. (Source)
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Medieval Islamic Medicine The medical tradition that developed in the lands of Islam during the medieval period (c. 650-1500) has, like few others, influenced the fates and fortunes of countless human beings. This title tells the story of contact and cultural exchange across countries and creeds, affecting many people from kings to the common crowd. more Medieval Islamic Medicine The medical tradition that developed in the lands of Islam during the medieval period (c. 650-1500) has, like few others, influenced the fates and fortunes of countless human beings. This title tells the story of contact and cultural exchange across countries and creeds, affecting many people from kings to the common crowd. less Amira BennisonThe Koran says, ‘For every disease, Allah has given a cure.’ It was this belief that there is a cure for every disease that encouraged early Muslims to engage in biomedical research. (Source)
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From the middle of the eighth century to the tenth century, almost all non-literary and non-historical secular Greek books, including such diverse topics as astrology, alchemy, physics, botany and medicine, that were not available throughout the eastern Byzantine Empire and the Near East, were translated into Arabic.
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture explores the major social, political and ideological factors that occasioned the unprecedented translation movement from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad, the newly founded capital of the Arab dynasty of the 'Abbasids', during the first two... more From the middle of the eighth century to the tenth century, almost all non-literary and non-historical secular Greek books, including such diverse topics as astrology, alchemy, physics, botany and medicine, that were not available throughout the eastern Byzantine Empire and the Near East, were translated into Arabic.
Greek Thought, Arabic Culture explores the major social, political and ideological factors that occasioned the unprecedented translation movement from Greek into Arabic in Baghdad, the newly founded capital of the Arab dynasty of the 'Abbasids', during the first two centuries of their rule. Dimitri Gutas draws upon the preceding historical and philological scholarship in Greco-Arabic studies and the study of medieval translations of secular Greek works into Arabic and analyses the social and historical reasons for this phenomenon.
Dimitri Gutas provides a stimulating, erudite and well-documented survey of this key movement in the transmission of ancient Greek culture to the Middle Ages. less 
Peter AdamsonAbout an enormous movement when Greek works of science and philosophy were translated into Arabic. (Source)
Amira BennisonGutas is very keen to flag up the role of the caliphs as patrons committed to an intellectual project. (Source)
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George Saliba follows the rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance. more George Saliba follows the rise and fall of the Islamic scientific tradition, and the relationship of Islamic science to European science during the Renaissance. less Amira BennisonThe thriving scientific tradition in the Islamic world underpins a lot of things that happen in the European Renaissance. (Source)
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Long before the European Enlightenment, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in Spain advanced our knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine and philosophy.
From Musa al-Khwarizmi, who developed algebra in ninth-century Baghdad, to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, the camshaft and the reciprocating piston, Ehsan Masood tells the amazing story of one of history’s most misunderstood yet rich and fertile periods in science, via the scholars, research, and science... more Long before the European Enlightenment, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in Spain advanced our knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medicine and philosophy.
From Musa al-Khwarizmi, who developed algebra in ninth-century Baghdad, to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, the camshaft and the reciprocating piston, Ehsan Masood tells the amazing story of one of history’s most misunderstood yet rich and fertile periods in science, via the scholars, research, and science of the Islamic empires of the Middle Ages. less Amira BennisonThis book looks at different areas of science in which the Islamic world excelled as well as the contemporary myth of Islam being backward and not promoting scientific thought. (Source)
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