Foundations of Knowledge: How Cities, Books, and Learning Communities Took Shape

How does a message become a civilization of learning? The first volume of The Young Explorer's Atlas of Muslim Civilization begins in Mecca and Medina and follows the remarkable growth of learning across the early Muslim world. Young readers will journey from the first learning communities to the busy intellectual centers of Damascus, Kufa, Basra, and Baghdad. Along the way, they will discover how knowledge traveled through teachers, students, manuscripts, markets, libraries, hospitals, mosques, madrasas, workshops, and observatories. They will explore how paper transformed book culture, how scribes protected texts, why scholars traveled enormous distances to study, how translators connected languages, and how charitable endowments helped institutions survive across generations. Rather than focusing only on rulers and famous names, Foundations of Knowledge reveals the enormous network of people who made learning possible: students, teachers, translators, physicians, librarians, booksellers, craftspeople, donors, travelers, and manuscript copyists. Activities, maps, historical objects, source challenges, and thought experiments encourage young readers to explore a central question: What does knowledge need in order to survive? An engaging introduction to the cities, books, institutions, and communities that helped shape Muslim civilization.