The Flying Man

From Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali to Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, the Golden Age of Islam produced and influenced some of the greatest philosophers in history. Despite their profound intellectual achievements, however, the contributions of Muslim philosophers have largely been forgotten or even dismissed. In this fascinating title, celebrated Pakistani-American academic and former diplomat Akbar Ahmed places the concept of Ibn Sina's Flying Man on par with Plato's allegory of the cave and Nietzsche's notion of the ubermensch. He begins by tracing the crucial transmission of Greek texts into Arabic to the development of an Islamic tradition that harmonised reason and revelation. He explores the lives and ideas of the era's greatest thinkers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, showing how the intellectual renaissance of the ninth to thirteenth centuries continues to influence religious thought and philosophical ideas today. Ahmed both challenges those who dismiss the contributions of Islamic civilization and revives its rich heritage for modern-day Muslims, arguing that the philosophers of the Golden Age of Islam still have much to teach us about wisdom, wonder and scholarship.