The 'fascinating and clearly written' (New Scientist) history of the extraordinary Islamic scientific revolution between the eighth and fifteenth centuries.

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 9th 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.

'Refreshingly different ....Masood's [book] emphasis on context, combined with his easy prose, measured self-confident tone, and an effort to inject compelling human drama into the narrative, makes the present book - for the most part - wonderfully captivating.'