There is no real shortage of books on this subject and the ones of most recent date are as follows. If I were to advise I would start with Masood’s book (linked to the TV series shown in many clips here) as it can easily be read in an afternoon. After that I think Al-Khalili’s (the TV series presenter) book is very readable and since he is a distinguished scientist, humanistic and atheist so in my view he brings a much needed clarity and depth to the actual science involved without any religious bias. But you must read more than one book to get a comprehensive picture and don't rely on carefully selected abstracts from web sites or YouTube if you really want to know and understand this history. Unfortunately, some of these books are expensive but use Amazon or abebooks.com to find second hand copies easily.
Saliba, G, (2007), Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, MIT Press, ISBN 978-0262516150
Lyons, J, (2010), The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, ISBN: 978-1408801215
Masood, E, (2009), Science and Islam: A History, Icon Books Ltd, ISBN: 978-1848310810
Morgan, M, (2008), Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists, NGS, ISBN: 978-1426202803
Al-Khalili, J, (2010), Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science, Allen Lane, ISBN: 978-1846141614
Turner, H, (1997), Science in Medieval Islam: An Illustrated Introduction, University of Texas Press, ISBN: 978-0292781498
Freely, J, (2010), Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe through the Islamic World, Vintage Books USA, ISBN: 978-0307277831
Al-Hassani, S.T.S, (2007), 1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World, FSTC, ISBN: 978-0955242618
Karabell, Z (2007), People of the Book: The Forgotten History of Islam and the West, John Murray, ISBN: 978-0719567551
Obviously I have not read all these books (just 3) but they are written by all kinds of authors from professional scientists and historians to journalists so you are bound to find inaccuracies or errors. For example, a common complaint about many of these books relates to the ethnicity and cultural background of the ancient scientists discussed and often they are all lumped together as ‘Arab’ because they wrote in Arabic giving readers the false impression those scientists such as Khwarizmi, Tusi, ibn-Sina and al-Razi were all Arabs when in fact they were Persian. Similarly we find other famous names such as Hunyan ibn Ishaq, Yahya ibn abi Mansur, Jibril ibn Bakhtyashu and Ibn Massawayh were Christians. Likewise Sahl al-Tabari, Ishaq ibn Amran, Mashaallah and Maimonides were Jewish.
Of course we cannot hope to understand the context of science at that time if we ignore the influence of Islam for Arabic science was inextricably linked to religion driven by a need to understand the Qu’ran plus the fact that the empire was large and made up of conquered nations so the income was immense so big science could and was funded (you cannot run an observatory for 30 years for peanuts). One final point is that politics in Baghdad during the early Abbasid rule was dominated by Islamic rationalists, known as the Mu’tazilites, who sought to combine faith and reason and this (unlike much of today’s Islamic world) led to a spirit of tolerance in which scientific enquiry of all kinds was encouraged - indeed it was said in the learned salons of Baghdad that you could say anything as long as it was well argued.
Some books don’t quite explain how science was transmitted and absorbed. For example, Ptolemy’s famous book ‘Almagest’ was translated into Arabic (3 versions) and his Planetary Hypothesis had a dramatic impact and shaped the course of Islamic Astronomy and so began a great sky watch and some Islamic Astronomers collected data for over 40 years. From this data they knew that Ptolemy’s model was wrong because any calculations using it had to be updated every few years but no one could figure out why although the famous Tusi couple idea helped simplify and modify the model but its was always fatally flawed. It was not so much that no one had ever thought of a heliocentric model (a number of Islamic astronomers and others did) but no one could figure out, explain, how such a model would work and that had to wait until Copernicus. Even then there was opposition from the Church and his new and correct model initially gave worse results than Tusi's updated model but eventually it was refined and recognised by all as correct.
Jim Kaklili said "It is rather sad that around the world today to non-Muslims the term Islam, [not without reason], evokes a negative stereotype that contrasts with our Western secular, tolerant and enlightened society. This lazy view can make it difficult to acknowledge that a thousand years ago the roles were reversed where it was understood that progress, through reason and rationality, is by definition a good thing; knowledge and enlightenment are always better than ignorance." In the same way Muslims can take a lazy view that everything Western is bad and instead of trusting in a shared humanity take a supremacist view and bask in the glories of the past whilst forgetting what other have done. For my part it does not concern me whether a particular area of science was developed by Greeks, Christians, Muslims or Jews because for me there is just science (there is only one Ohms law or Archimedes Principle etc) and I take the view that if God created the Universe and its laws there is no real difference in principle perhaps between someone claiming moral revelations and those who discover scientific ones as they all ultimately must come from God.
