When Islam met Western enlightenment

From The Arab Weekly:

In a closely researched and elegantly written book, “The Republic of Arabic Letters,” we learn that the foundations of the modern Western understanding were laid as early as the 17th century by scholars who pursued independent research and exchanged ideas with each other and influenced prominent Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire and Edward Gibbon. They assimilated the factual content of these works and then wove their interpretations into the very fabric of Enlightenment thought.

“The Republic of Arabic Letters” outlines the connections between these scholars and the Roman Catholic Church. One of the early library collections of Quranic texts was commissioned by Pope Clement XI in the early 18th century. These scholars, who included Protestants, went to great length to learn Arabic, Persian and Turkish and acquire, study and comprehend Arabic manuscripts.

Protect Your Library With Horrifying Book Curses

Given the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures.

Drogin’s book, published in 1983, is the most thorough compendium of book curses ever compiled. 

To those historians, the curses were curiosities, but to Drogin they were evidence of just how valuable books were to medieval scribes and scholars, at a time when even the most elite institutions might have libraries of only a few dozen books.

Read More Here @ Atlas Obscura