Translations from Arabic and the First Universities

Europe and the entire West owe much to Medieval Islamic culture.

From the beginning of the 12^th century, in fact, and until the middle of the 13^th, an enormous quantity of documents of Islamic origin were translated from Arabic into Latin. These texts ranged from mathematics to medicine, philosophy, magic and astrology. Their translation contributed enormously to the transmission of knowledge in three geographical areas, in particular, in which Christians and Muslims had close contacts – in Spain (especially in Andalusia), Sicily and the Middle East.

The Europeans were fascinated by the Arabs’ extensive knowledge, above all in the scientific field. Their theoretical and technical discoveries – in the avant-garde for their time – included, for example, the creation of astrolabes, instruments for medicine and time measurement, irrigation equipment and so on.

The Arabian sciences

As early as the beginning of the 12^th century, Adelard of Bath, a British philosopher, mathematician and astrologer, was among the first to express great admiration for the Arabian sciences. Adelard had been educated in cathedral schools, both at home and abroad. He relates that he took one of his students to a famous learning centre in North-East Paris and stipulated an agreement with him: the student was to learn as best he could everything they taught him in Paris, while Adelard, in the meantime, would dedicate himself to the study of Arabian culture. A few years later, they would meet again to discuss and compare the results of what they had learnt from the two cultures. Adelard, therefore, visited the Princedom of Antioch – an important cultural centre of the Near East – and then Sicily.

Seven years later, he returned to compare notes with his disciple. Adelard described his Arabian studies as innovative and exciting, but dismissed the French studies as traditional and boring. The central point of contrast, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the Arabs “use the brain, the ratio, while the French rely on authority. As animals are led by a halter, but do not know where or why they are being led, and only follow the rope by which they are pulled along, so the noose of the world leads many people into danger, since they accept what they are told, without question. So what is the point of having a brain, if one does not think with one’s head? (free translation, as cited by Prof. Burnett).

John of Salisbury – a British writer and prelate and one of the most important cultural figures of the Middle Ages – stated in the mid-12^th century that the Muslims were the only people who understood and applied geometry as a means of observing the stars.

Daniel of Morley, in that same period, moved from England to France and described the French academies as full of professors “more resembling asses than men”. When he discovered that Arabian studies were flourishing at Toledo, the new Spanish capital, he moved there and collaborated with the great translators of Arabian science and philosophy, including Gherardo da Cremona.

The Toledo Translators

It was in Toledo, in the second half of the 12^th century, that the larger part of the translations into Latin were completed. It was here that Domingo Gundisalvo, a philosopher, translator and Archdeacon of the Cathedral, and Gerard of Cremona, known as “Il Maestro” on account of his outstanding intelligence, undertook the translation of texts on psychology, metaphysics, logic, geometry, natural sciences, astronomy and medicine.

Both worked on their own version of an Arabian treatise on the classification of the sciences, written by Al-Farabi, an important commentator on the work of Aristotle. Al-Farabi’s texts provided the Toledo translators with a pattern that they could follow for an entire century, from the middle of the 12^th to the middle of the 13^th.

The translators’ principal purpose was to recover the ancient teachings of Euclid, Ptolemy, Aristoteles and Galen. In particular, all knowledge concerning geometry, astronomy, philosophy and medicine that had survived until the Greeks, the Byzantine Empire and the Arabs. These documents would then become canonical texts in the first European universities. Most of them had originally been written in Greek, in which form they had been discovered by the 9^th century scholars of Baghdad who then translated them into Arabic, sometimes via Syriac.

Jewish Translators

Other translators took advantage of the diaspora of Jewish scholars, who had cultivated Arabian knowledge while living under Islamic governments. Domenico Gundisalvi, for example, an indefatigable translator of Greek-Arabic philosophical texts, availed himself of the help of Giovanni Ispano (Ibn Dāwūd), a Jew, who translated the Arabic word for word into Castilian, which Gundisalvi then translated into Latin. The works of this group of translators were highly influential in the West. The translation, for example, of “The Canon of Medicine” by the Muslim doctor Avicenna (980 – 1037), became the most important treatise on medical pathology of the Middle Ages and remained so for several decades ( Treccani Encyclopedia).

     The arteries and viscera. Credit: Wellcome Collection

From the beginning of the 12^th century, many translations were also completed in various parts of Italy, such as Pisa, Venice and Catania. During the 13^th century, the entire corpus of translations was revised and improved. Michael Scot, for example, who moved from Toledo to the court of Federico II in Palermo, completed in Sicily his endeavour to translate Aristoteles’s works on the natural sciences systematically from Arabic.

Translations and the First Universities

It is not by chance that the period in which Aristoteles’s texts were translated from Arabic to Latin coincided with the birth of European universities. The translations were sent or transported from the places where they had been composed, in the Ebro Valley of Northern Spain, to Toledo, Antioch or Naples, first to cathedrals and monastic schools, then to the cities in which universities were developing, such as Paris, Padua, Oxford, Cambridge and Salamanca. The translations were adopted by the nascent universities as texts, giving rise to commentaries and summaries by Latin writers. But their Arabian origin was never forgotten.

One of the greatest cultural revolutions in history originated, therefore, with a group of translators, first of the School of Toledo, then that of Palermo during the reign of Federico II in Sicily. This vast work of translation and transcription enabled Eastern knowledge to be transmitted to the West, through the work of translators who enjoyed an exceptional status of protection. They could work without being persecuted, especially in Spain, where Christians, Muslims, Jews, Orthodox and heterodox Christians collaborated side by side. They were all great amateurs of culture, great cultivators of languages and possessed great knowledge. It is thanks to them that, still today, we can gain access to an immense cultural universe that would otherwise have remained unknown. (From a lesson by Prof. Carlo Sini, Professor Theoretical Philosophy at Milan State University).

Special thanks to the paleographers of Galactus Translations for their contribution to the article.

Source: Extract from a speech by Charles Burnett, Full Professor of The History of Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London. Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, 12-14 October 2016 

Image credits: Folding Almanac, Wellcome Collection, London.