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Mr. Morgan began by noting that when Americans think of history, they tend to stay within the bounds of their own national narrative. If they need to go further, they look to renaissance Europe or to ancient Greece or Rome. He reminded the audience that classical Islam must be included in this framework, without which there would be an 800-year gap. Mr. Morgan then thanked His Excellency King ‘Abdullah II of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for writing the forward to his book, and His Royal Highness Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid al-Hussein, Jordanian Ambassador to the US, for his additional support of the volume.

Mr. Morgan lauded the Islamic thinkers of a thousand years ago for laying the foundation for digital technology, modern philosophy, pharmaceuticals, civic leadership, and other advancements, while also praising their society’s tolerance of diversity. This period was a wellspring of innovation that is often overlooked. As time passed, explained the former diplomat, new histories were written and old ones forgotten.

He asserted that although Americans and Europeans refer to their culture as “Judeo-Christian,” other histories cry out for inclusion, and Islam is the first among them. Mr. Morgan stressed that he was using the term “Islam” not in a religious sense, but as a cultural and civilizational term. Under this banner he included not just the Abbasid empire of the Arab world, but also Moghul India and Ottoman Turkey. One popular view is that Muslims safeguarded the knowledge of the Roman and Greek civilizations during the dark ages, a concept known as the “refrigerator theory.” Mr. Morgan decried this notion as incomplete and demeaning, contending that Islam also produced a vast array of original ideas, in addition to preserving older ones.

He illustrated his point by relating the stories of several Muslim scholars, derived mainly from translations of authentic primary source texts, beginning with the Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi. Working from the “House of Wisdom,” a library and translation institute in Abbasid-era Baghdad, al-Khwarizmi was responsible for the diffusion of the Hindu number system in the Middle East and the West. Armed with the concepts of zero and negative numbers, al-Khwarizmi greatly broadened the ancient Greek geometric understanding of mathematics to include these more abstract concepts, leading him to formulate the notion of the algorithm. Because the algorithm underlies all modern software, Mr. Morgan praised al-Khwarizmi’s work as one of the single most influential discoveries in intellectual history. According to Mr. Morgan, the scholars of classical Islam were the first true renaissance men and women, laying the foundation for the European renaissance.

He explained that the flowering of knowledge during this period was attributable to the high status learning was accorded in the religion of Islam, recalling for example the Qur’anic verse which states that “the ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr.” He opined that, of the three Abrahamic religions, Islam held knowledge in the highest regard. The rise of the great cities of the Caliphate, including Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo, further aided the development of a large scholarly community. Even as the empire began to fracture, competition among rival regional rulers for intellectual capital continued to elevate the value of knowledge.

Mr. Morgan went on to give brief sketches of other prominent Muslim scholars, including physicist al-Haytham, mathematician and poet Omar Khayyam, and physicians Abu al-Qasim and Mussa bin Maimun. In closing, he stressed the artificiality of the distinction between the West and the Muslim world.