Apollo's sun illuminates the West

I longed to read this book had made about him on a polemical tone, probably to the surprise of the author. I longed but by telling me that it was probably one of those thick academic books, stuffed unreadable page footnotes and riddled until the glottis of references. I have not been disappointed on references (no less than 16 pages), nor on the notes that have the advantage of being repressed in the end volume and thus to release the reading area (46 pages of notes all the same). Above all, I was surprised at the high readability. Sylvain Gougenheim speaks clearly on a theme that can quickly become abstruse.

I enjoyed this book. Firstly because he speaks of books and the knowledge contained in these books. He speaks of this fierce desire to transmit knowledge, to pick him up, insert it in a given culture, to keep it, comment on it and improve it. Speaking of books sent, the author speaks of course of how civilizations are built. Secondly, I appreciate that the author speaks of this European know from the Greek world, transmitted by Byzantine and Arab Christians who translated into Syriac and Arabic a number of books. Sylvain Gougenheim expressed different distribution channels of knowledge, first by the large Greek diaspora, then the men of the West that went seek knowledge wherever it was available, and these Oriental Christians which we must much.

The controversy, amid contemporary dominant ideology, was no doubt the fact that the author made a clear distinction between the Arabs and Muslims. Indeed, it appears in his statements that Islam has recovered part of the ancient knowledge that to pass through his own filter and eliminate anything that could contradict the Koran. The systems of thought between the Christian world and the Islamic world were so antagonistic that it seems very difficult to imagine a transmission through this. However, the dominant theory of transmission by the East skillfully mixes Arab and Islamic transmission transmission, which is not the same. And the author cited in Chapter 2 and in Appendix 2 of this book the great writers of Arab Christians in the eleventh century VIIIè: Hunain ibn Ishaq, Theodore Abu Qurra, Yuhanna ibn Masawayd (John Mesue), Theophilus of Edessa, Yahya ibn al-batriq etc.

One of the most fascinating of this book is Appendix 1 which shows parts why in the contemporary world, there is clouding this blissful for the Eastern world. The author indicates that it goes back to Sigrid Hunke, German orientalist and convinced Nazi, which was published after the war a book called "The Sun of Allah shines on the West: Our Arab heritage" in which the intellectual, by hatred Christianity, dedicates a boundless admiration for Islam, liable for all discoveries and all the subtleties. The author's conclusions are final on this item. We will not forgive him that no more that to dispel the current mindless orientalophilie.

A book against the flow and very easy reading.
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For information to be complete, I indicate here the broad lines of the table of contents of this book:

Foreword to the "Dark Ages"

Introduction: history of a transmission >> Lights of Islam, dark ages of Christianity? / A simplistic vision / Greek roots of Europe

Chapter I: Permanences scattered and quest of ancient knowledge: Greek industry
Chapter II: Survival and spread of Greek knowledge in the Mediterranean: Byzantium
Chapter III: The monks pioneers of Mont Saint-Michel: the work of Jacques Venice
Chapter IV- Islam and know Greek
Chapter V Civilization Problems
Conclusion: Apollo sun illuminates the West

Appendix 1: The friend of Himmler and the "sun of Allah"
Appendix 2: The Arab Christian scholars of the eighth to the eleventh century
Appendix 3: The Latin corpus of Aristotle