Light from the East: How the Science of Medieval Islam helped to shape the Western World

Light from the East

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Europe and the Islamic lands had multiple points of contact during the Middle Ages. The main points of transmission of Islamic knowledge to Europe lay in Sicily and in Spain , particularly in Toledo with Gerard of Cremone , —, following the conquest of the city by Spanish Christians in In Sicily, following the Islamic conquest of the island in and its reconquest by the Normans in , a syncretistic Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture developed, exemplified by rulers such as King Roger II , who had Islamic soldiers, poets and scientists at his court.

The Crusades also intensified exchanges between Europe and the Levant , with the Italian maritime republics taking a major role in these exchanges. In the Levant, in such cities as Antioch , Arab and Latin cultures intermixed intensively. During the 11th and 12th centuries, many Christian scholars travelled to Muslim lands to learn sciences. Notable examples include Leonardo Fibonacci c.

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From the 11th to the 14th centuries, numerous European students attended Muslim centers of higher learning which the author calls "universities" to study medicine , philosophy , mathematics , cosmography and other subjects. In the Middle East , many classical Greek texts , especially the works of Aristotle , were translated into Syriac during the 6th and 7th centuries by Nestorian , Melkite or Jacobite monks living in Palestine , or by Greek exiles from Athens or Edessa who visited Islamic centres of higher learning.

The Islamic world then kept, translated, and developed many of these texts, especially in centers of learning such as Baghdad , where a " House of Wisdom " with thousands of manuscripts existed as early as These texts were in turn translated into Latin by scholars such as Michael Scot who made translations of Historia Animalium and On the Soul as well as of Averroes's commentaries [6] during the Middle Ages.

Later Latin translations of these texts originated in multiple places. Toledo, Spain with Gerard of Cremona 's Almagest and Sicily became the main points of transmission of knowledge from the Islamic world to Europe. The Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides , Muslim sociologist-historian Ibn Khaldun , Carthage citizen Constantine the African who translated Greek medical texts, and Al-Khwarizmi's collation of mathematical techniques were important figures of the Golden Age.

Avicennism and Averroism are terms for the revival of the Peripatetic school in medieval Europe due to the influence of Avicenna and Averroes, respectively. Avicenna was an important commentator on the works of Aristotle , modifying it with his own original thinking in some areas, notably logic. This was particularly the case in Paris , where so-called Arabic culture was proscribed in , though the influence of his psychology and theory of knowledge upon William of Auvergne and Albertus Magnus have been noted.

The effects of Avicennism in were later submerged by the much more influential Averroism , the Aristotelianism of Averroes, one of the most influential Muslim philosophers in the West. Dante Aligheri argues along Averroist lines for a secularist theory of the state in De Monarchia.

Al-Ghazali also had an important influence on medieval Christian philosopher along with Jewish thinkers like Maimonides. George Makdisi has suggested that two particular aspects of Renaissance humanism have their roots in the medieval Islamic world , the "art of dictation , called in Latin, ars dictaminis ," and "the humanist attitude toward classical language ". He notes that dictation was a necessary part of Arabic scholarship where the vowel sounds need to be added correctly based on the spoken word , and argues that the medieval Italian use of the term "ars dictaminis" makes best sense in this context.

He also believes that the medieval humanist favouring of classical Latin over medieval Latin makes most sense in the context of a reaction to Arabic scholarship, with its study of the classical Arabic of the Koran in preference to medieval Arabic. During the Islamic Golden Age, certain advances were made in scientific fields, notably in mathematics and astronomy algebra , spherical trigonometry , and in chemistry , etc. Stefan of Pise translated into Latin around an Arab manual of medical theory.

The method of algorism for performing arithmetic with Indian-Arabic numerals was developed by the Persian al-Khwarizmi in the 9th century, and introduced in Europe by Leonardo Fibonacci — Ibn al-Haytham Alhazen, — compiled treatises on optical sciences, which were used as references by Newton and Descartes. Medical sciences were also highly developed in Islam as testified by the Crusaders, who relied on Arab doctors on numerous occasions.

Contributing to the growth of European science was the major search by European scholars such as Gerard of Cremona for new learning. These scholars were interested in ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts notably the Almagest which were not obtainable in Latin in Western Europe, but which had survived and been translated into Arabic in the Muslim world.

Gerard was said to have made his way to Toledo in Spain and learnt Arabic specifically because of his "love of the Almagest ". While there he took advantage of the "abundance of books in Arabic on every subject". These scholars translated many scientific and philosophical texts from Arabic into Latin. Western alchemy was directly dependent upon Arabic sources. The exact attribution of these works remains a matter of some controversy. The translation of Al-Khwarizmi 's work greatly influenced mathematics in Europe.

As Professor Victor J. There was also some awareness that much of plane and spherical trigonometry could be attributed to Islamic authors". This and other Arabic astronomical and mathematical works, such as those by al-Battani [22] and Muhammad al-Fazari 's Great Sindhind based on the Surya Siddhanta and the works of Brahmagupta. Fibonacci presented the first complete European account of Arabic numerals and the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in his Liber Abaci Al-Jayyani 's The book of unknown arcs of a sphere a treatise on spherical trigonometry had a "strong influence on European mathematics".

Much of the material was taken from the 12th-century work of Jabir ibn Aflah, as noted in the 16th century by Gerolamo Cardano. A short verse used by Fulbert of Chartres — to help remember some of the brightest stars in the sky gives us the earliest known use of Arabic loanwords in a Latin text: Scorpio, you have Galbalagrab ; and you, Capricorn, Deneb. You, Batanalhaut , are alone enough for Pisces. Ibn al-Haytham Alhazen wrote the Book of Optics , in which he developed a theory of vision and light which built on the work of the Roman writer Ptolemy but which rejected Ptolemy's theory that light was emitted by the eye , insisting instead that light rays entered the eye , and was the most significant advance in this field until Kepler.

In religion , for example, John Wycliffe , the intellectual progenitor of the Protestant Reformation , referred to Alhazen in discussing the seven deadly sins in terms of the distortions in the seven types of mirrors analyzed in De aspectibus. The theory of motion developed by Avicenna from Aristotelian physics may have influenced Jean Buridan 's theory of impetus the ancestor of the inertia and momentum concepts.

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The magnetic compass , a Chinese invention, is first mentioned in Arabic sources of c. One of the most important medical works to be translated was Avicenna 's The Canon of Medicine , which was translated into Latin and then disseminated in manuscript and printed form throughout Europe.

It remained a standard medical textbook in Europe until the early modern period, and during the 15th and 16th centuries alone, The Canon of Medicine was published more than thirty-five times. Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi wrote Kitab al-Tasrif , an encyclopedia of medicine which was particularly famed for its section on surgery.

It included descriptions and diagrams of over surgical instruments, many of which he developed. The surgery section was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 12th century, and used in European medical schools for centuries, still being reprinted in the s. Various fruits and vegetables were introduced to Europe in this period via the Middle East and North Africa, some from as far as China and India , including the artichoke , spinach , and aubergine. Islamic decorative arts were highly valued imports to Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

Largely because of accidents of survival, most surviving examples are those that were in the possession of the church. In the early period textiles were especially important, used for church vestments, shrouds, hangings and clothing for the elite. Islamic pottery of everyday quality was still preferred to European wares. Because decoration was mostly ornamental, or small hunting scenes and the like, and inscriptions were not understood, Islamic objects did not offend Christian sensibilities.

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The Arabic Kufic script was often imitated for decorative effect in the West during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, to produce what is known as pseudo-Kufic: Pseudo-Kufic would be used as writing or as decorative elements in textiles, religious halos or frames. Many are visible in the paintings of Giotto. It seems that Westerners mistakenly associated 13th- and 14th-century Middle-Eastern scripts as being identical with the scripts current during Jesus 's time, and thus found natural to represent early Christians in association with them: Carpets of Middle-Eastern origin, either from the Ottoman Empire , the Levant or the Mamluk state of Egypt or Northern Africa , were a significant sign of wealth and luxury in Europe, as demonstrated by their frequent occurrence as important decorative features in paintings from the 13th century and continuing into the Baroque period.

Such carpets, together with Pseudo-Kufic script offer an interesting example of the integration of Eastern elements into European painting, most particularly those depicting religious subjects. A number of musical instruments used in European music were influenced by Arabic musical instruments, including the rebec an ancestor of the violin from the rebab and the naker from naqareh [65] The oud is cited as one of several precursors to the modern guitar. Some scholars believe that the troubadors may have had Arabian origins, with Magda Bogin stating that the Arab poetic and musical tradition was one of several influences on European "courtly love poetry".

The scholars attempted to translate the lines in question and produced various different translations; the medievalist Istvan Frank contended that the lines were not Arabic at all, but instead the result of the rewriting of the original by a later scribe. Beech states that there is only one documented battle that William fought in Spain, and it occurred towards the end of his life.

John Freely first went to Istanbul in to teach physics at Robert College, now the University of the Bosphorus, to which he returned in Alles van John Freely.

Toon meer Toon minder. Samenvatting Long before the European Renaissance, while the western world was languishing in what was once called the 'Dark Ages', the Arab world was ablaze with the knowledge, invention and creativity of its Golden Age. This is the story of how Islamic science, which began with the translation of Greek manuscripts into Arabic in eighth-century Baghdad, preserved and enhanced the knowledge acquired from Greece, Mesopotamia, India and China. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge was carried from Samarkand and Baghdad to Cordoba and beyond, influencing western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas and Copernicus and helping to inspire the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance.

John Freely tells this spellbinding story against a background of the melting pot of cultures involved and concludes with the decline of Islam's Golden Age, which led the West to forget the debt it owed to the Muslim world and the influence of medieval Islamic civilisation in forging the beginnings of modern science.

Recensie s 'John Freely is a virtuoso of cultural narration.

His Light from the East stands as a towering achievement that chronicles the process of awakenings in the Western world under the impetus of Islamic sciences. Thanks to its easy flowing style, it sheds light on how the Muslims conveyed the scientific heritage of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece as well as their own discoveries and inventions to the Western world. Halman, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters at Bilkent University; 'John Freely's Light from the East presents a thorough and wide-ranging account of pre-Islamic and Islamic science as well as of the considerable debt that Western scientific thinking owes to the Arabs.

Overige kenmerken Extra groot lettertype Nee. Reviews Schrijf een review. In winkelwagen Op verlanglijstje. Gratis verzending vanaf 20 euro 30 dagen bedenktijd en gratis retourneren Ophalen bij een bol. Bekijk en vergelijk alle verkopers. Turner Science in Medieval Islam 27,

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