8 - Beginnings of the Islamic Intellectual Revolution

The Islamic intellectual movement that rescued the works of Classical Greece and Rome and sparked the European renaissance took off with the founding of Baghdad in 750 AD.  The Abbasid caliphs poured vast wealth into the creation of centers of research and analysis unparalleled in the world.  The beginning phase of this effort is known, rather inaccurately, as 'The Translation Movement," and is credited with saving much of the knowledge of Greece and Rome from the barbarian invasions.  Yet at the center of this movement, in the famed "House of Wisdom" in Baghdad, a merging of Classical wisdom with Islam was beginning an intellectual revolution that would forever change Western thinking.  In this episode, we examine the Translation Movement and one of its leading figures, the "First Arab Philosopher," Abu Yusuf al-Kindi.