How early Muslim scholars assimilated Aristotle and made Iran the intellectual center of the Islamic world

This book is a timely commentary on the frayed relations that currently exist between East and West. Taking as his point of departure the fate of Aristotle’s corpus in medieval Christianity and in medieval Islam, Sadri offers a masterful account of how the current status of Western and Iranian identity can be read through the palimpsest of a philosophical/religious recovery of Aristotle's practical philosophy. But this is also a work that offers a sober and balanced assessment of the spiritual impoverishment that plagues each of the cultures under discussion. As someone educated in both Iran and in America, Sadri brilliantly analyzes the East/West divide in a compelling philosophical account that is marked by a rare sensitivity to the importance of concrete human relationships. This is a book that demands to be read by those ignorant of the inordinate role played by Iranian thinkers on the development of Western thought.