Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Decline of the Roman empire – Christians in Rome – problems with the gospel of St Mark – Paul – Jewish Christianity – paganism in Rome – early Christian martyrs – Constantine – observation of Sunday – pagan/Christian synthesis – ‘gift of the spirit’ – the idea of bishop – the rise of Rome – monasticism – predecessors of the Bible – Paul’s epistles – Clement of Alexandria – Jerome – Augustine – Gregory the Great – the Easter controversy – BC/AD – ‘barbaros’, early ideas of barbarians – the idea of the Middle Ages – Celtic and Germanic tribes – barbarian gods – the Huns – the division between Latin and Germanic peoples

11. The Near-Death of the Book, the Birth of Christian Art

The effects of barbarian depredations – Christians reject science – Christian view of rhetoric – ‘the closing of the Western mind’ – suspicion of books – atrophy of debate – Rome’s libraries closed – Justinian closes the philosophical school in Athens – Alexandria isolated – decline of translation – preservation of the classics in Byzantium – Themistius – the ‘transmitters’ – Martianus Capella – Boethius – Cassiodorus – Isidore – paper in the West – a new script: cursive miniscule – the Stoudios monastery – beginnings of punctuation – imperial university revived in Constantinople – Photius and his list of lost books – the birth of Christian art – the first churches – catacombs of Rome – Dura-Europos – Ravenna – icons – the iconoclast controversy – new rules for Christian art

12. Falsafah and al-Jabr in Baghdad and Toledo

Pre-eminence of poetry – the Golden Odes – ‘the time of ignorance’ – Mecca and the tribe of Quraysh – Muhammad – the Night of Power – the Qurʾan – five pillars of Islam – origins of Arabic – the caliphate – Shiʾas and Sunnis – hadith – Islamic aesthetics – Dome of the Rock – al-Mansur – Baghdad – Gondeshapur – al-Ma ʿmun – al-Farabi – House of Wisdom – the great translators – hospitals and madrasas – the first pharmacy – early doctors: al-Razi and Ibn Sina – al-Khwarizmi and Hindu-Arabic numerals – al-Jabr – early chemistry – falsafah – al-Kindi – Nizamiyah – Muʿtazilites – al-Ghazali – the foreign sciences v. the Qurʾanic sciences – Cordova and Toledo – Ali ibn-Hazm – Ibn Khaldun – advances in botany – ibn Rushd-Averroës – the Toledo school of translators – Gundisalvi and Gerard of Cremona – the Almagest

13. Hindu Numerals, Sanskrit, Vedanta