Syria Land of Civilizations. Between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, Muslim scholars, especially those living in Syria, distinguished themselves in most fields of scientific

Astrolabe

Between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, Muslim scholars, especially those living in Syria, distinguished themselves in most fields of scientific knowledge. For a long time, the Islamic world was considered to have been the repository of the scientific heritage of the Greeks and Romans. In fact, Muslim scholars contributed significantly to the development and diffusion of scientific knowledge, and were responsible for transmitting a great deal of learning to the Western world in a number of scientific disciplines.

There was harmonious agreement from the start between science and the Islamic religion. Not only does the Koran use the word “science” in 160 of its verses, but it also encourages the acquisition of knowledge. For according to the Prophet Muhammad, the ink of the scholar was more blessed than the blood of the martyr, science was more meritorious than prayer, and a little knowledge was better than much devotion.

THE TRANSMISSION SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE THE WEST

Manuscript: medical works

In the preceding sections, it has been seen that the Arab scholars did not content themselves with simply practicing what they learned from the Greek and Latin manuscripts that they had translated into Syriac and then Arabic. They began to make résumés of these texts to understand them better, but also made comments, criticisms and additions based on their own experimentation. After this period of learning, which is normal in any scientific undertaking, a number of Muslim scholars went beyond what their predecessors had done and conducted research that led to original discoveries within the traditional scientific disciplines. It is an unfortunate fact that such scientific works were seldom translated into Latin, the language of science in Europe until the eighteenth century. For example, while a thousand medical texts in Arabic have survived to this day, only about 40 of them were known in Europe. The situation for other disciplines is very similar.

Surgical instruments

Arab science spread to Europe not so much through contact with the Crusaders who came to the Near East in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, but rather through the dynasties that ruled over Islamic Spain between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. These were the Almorávides and later the Almohádes, who established their capital at Cordova. In this period, Spain was full of Arab translations of Greek and Latin scientific manuscripts. These works were studied and commented on by Muslim scholars like the twelfth-century Cordovan philosopher Ibn Rushd (known as Averroes in the West), whose commentaries on Aristotle are unequaled and who wrote treatises on medicine, grammar, law and astronomy. In Toledo, during the twelfth century, there was even a bureau for translating Arab manuscripts into Latin so that they could be sent to the rest of Europe. In 1277, the king of Castille had a Spanish-language compilation made of Arab astronomic works so that Spanish scholars could use them. In the same year, the secrets of glassmaking were transmitted to Venice in accordance with the provisions of a treaty between the prince of Antioch and the Doge. From that time on, there were innumerable transfers of technological knowledge.

Door knocker

It should also be recalled here that the technique for making paper, which had been learned by the Arabs from the Chinese in 751, had made it possible for a true market for books to develop in the Islamic world, and this had naturally encouraged the dissemination of scientific knowledge. This enormously important technique was transmitted to the West beginning in the twelfth century through the Emirate of Cordova. Paper-making then spread to Italy, or more precisely, Fabriano, where, in 1276, the first European factory for producing paper is thought to have been established. Other factories followed, especially at Troyes, France, in 1348 and at Nuremburg, Germany, in 1390. The material support for writing that had been transmitted by the Arabs facilitated the spread of ideas in Europe. Paper also led to a new invention — printing — around 1450. The printing press gave crucial impetus to the diffusion of knowledge, which has become the defining characteristic of our scientific world today.