Raymond Levine
Lost Enlightenment: Polymaths from the Centre of the World
Summary
Raymond Levine takes a look at a golden age of Islamic culture and learning, delving into an era of prosperity. He highlights prominent figures of the period and examines its impact on European thought and culture. He also addresses misconceptions surrounding this era and discusses the factors that contributed to its decline.
Raymond Levine
Raymond Levine has been a practicing lawyer in London for over 50 years. He is now retired, at least officially. Having read law at Oxford University, he has spent his precious spare time over many years reading more interesting and exciting things, on topics such as history, philosophy, religion, mythology, and even occasionally science. Apart from a little law, he claims no particular expertise in any of them. Nonetheless he is an advocate of the idea that all things are interconnected and hopes to develop this line of thought in an informative and entertaining way.
I think some of them who were thought to be useful were supported by political rulers. I mean certainly the caliphs in Baghdad would’ve supported a number of scholars. Many Central Asian scholars actually moved to Baghdad so they would’ve had some support. We’ve seen in the talk how even the Mongols were prepared to give financial supports where they considered it in their interest to do so.
In Europe we have traditionally called it Persia. But in Iran, Iran is the normal name. Persia is just a small part of Iran. It gives its name to the language. Persia is derived from the Fars, the name to the language, which is called Farsi, today. If you meet a Persian or an Iranian and ask them what language they’re speaking, they’ll tell you they’re “speaking in Farsi.” So I would say it would be more respectful to talk of Iran. Persia owes a little bit to Orientalism in the past.
Absolutely, they did. Not necessarily the polymaths who worked in the same field, but there would’ve been translators. I mentioned the Barmaks. There were many other translators, and they would’ve spoken Greek, because Greek was a language known in this region.