Bridging Cultures: Muslim Journeys Bookshelf : Connected Histories

Stewart Gordon has fashioned a fascinating and unique look at Asia from A.D. 700 to 1500, a time when Asia was the world, by describing the personal journeys of many travelers-the merchants who traded spices along the Silk Road, the apothecaries who exchanged medicine and knowledge from China to the Middle East, and the philosophers and holy men who crossed continents to explore and exchange ideas, books, science, and culture.

A myth-shattering view of the medieval Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations, which preceded-and enabled-the European Renaissance.

Undoing the familiar notion of the Middle Ages as a period of religious persecution and intellectual stagnation, Marla Menocal now brings us a portrait of a medieval culture where literature, science, and tolerance flourished for 500 years. The period covered here is extremely relevant to understanding some of today's most terrible conflicts.

Leo Africanus is a beautiful book of tales about people who are forced to accept choices made for them by someone else...It relates, particularly at times and often imaginatively, the story of those who did not make it to the New World.--New York Times Book Review

Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some of these figures are real, some only imagined, but all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel.In an Antique Landis an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras, weaving an entrancing and intoxicating spell.