Facts about the Islamic Golden Age (3)

This is the third in a series of articles correcting various claims made about the Islamic Golden Age. See the first article in this series for the context. This article addresses claims about the preservation and translation of Greek and Roman texts by Muslim scholars during the Middle ages.

It is claimed that Muslim scholars preserved countless Greek and Latin texts by translating them into Arabic, preventing them being lost forever. Senior European Correspondent for the scientific journal Nature Alison Abbott Senior European Correspondent for the scientific journal Nature says “it was to Persian and Indian scholars that the translators turned when they needed to make scientific, as well as linguistic, sense of the old Greek manuscripts”. [1]

However, even if they had not been translated they would not have been lost forever, since they were already being preserved largely by Byzantine Christians in the East, and partly by Christians in the West. Regardless, Abbott’s claim is actually completely backwards. The translators to whom Abbott refers did not turn to Persian and Indian scholars when making sense of the old Greek manuscripts. They did not need to, because they were not only already literate in Greek (which is why they were chosen as translators), but they were familiar with the Greek philosophical texts they were translating.

Reading Abbot’s article, a casual reader could be forgiven for concluding that these translators were Muslim scholars, but Abbott does not identify exactly who they are. However, an article by Dr Rachel Hajar of the Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar, says explicitly “Islamic scholars translated their voluminous writings from Greek into Arabic and then produced new medical knowledge based on those texts”. [2]

A much more detailed article on the translation movement of the Islamic Golden Age, written by Dr Hala Al-Khalidi and Dr Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani of the University of Jordan, provides much more information. The article describes the translators as Syriacs, Arabs, Arabists and Muslims, with one reference to a Nestorian doctor. [3] The article concludes by referring to “the role played by Muslim translators”, explicitly attributing the translation movement of the Islamic Golden Age to Arab Muslims. [4]

Many scholarly journals and academic books repeat the same narrative. Professor Bahattin Karagözoğlu of the King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia says “Muslim translators first translated the Greek knowledge into Arabic and then into other languages”. [5] Cultural anthropologist doctor Tanya Gulevich says “Muslim translators set about decoding these ancient texts”. [6] Dr Arshad Islam of the International Islamic University of Malaysia goes so far as to say “It is entirely due to the Muslim translators that the rare books of Hippocrates and Galen were saved from extinction”. [7]

Describing the translators of the Islamic Golden Age as Syriacs, Arabs, Arabists, Muslims, and Islamic scholars, these articles all give the impression that the translation movement was almost exclusively the work of Arab Muslims. The scholars who attribute the work of the translation movement to Muslim translators, are usually Arabs or Muslims, and it is possible that their use of this description is attributable at least in part to an internal bias. However, it should be noted that not every Arab or Muslim scholar uses this description.

Nevertheless, regardless of the identity of the writer making the claim, attributing the translation movement to Muslim scholars is extremely misleading, and and a distortion of the facts. In reality, none of the translators of the Islamic Golden Age were Arab Muslims, or Persian Muslims, or even Muslims of any other ethnic group.

While it is true that Muslims scholars (whether Arab, Persian, or otherwise), helped preserve many of the classical Greek texts, they did not do so by translating them. In fact Muslim scholars could not translate them. The whole reason for the translation of Greek texts into Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age was not for the purpose of preserving them. It was because Muslim scholars could not read Greek or Latin, and were therefore totally unable to understand the texts they had acquired unless they were translated. Franz Rosenthal, who was the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Yale University, noted that the famous ninth and tenth century Muslim commentators on the Greek texts, did not actually know how to read or write either Greek or Syriac. [8]

Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Munich, writes “When philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes read Aristotle, it was never in Greek — a language of which they were ignorant”. [9]

Since they could not read the Greek texts themselves, Muslim scholars paid Christian and Jewish scholars to translate these works into Arabic for them. In contrast to Alison Abbott’s claim, it was actually the Christians who could understand not only the language but the philosophical background of the Greek texts. Adamson comments “These Christians could offer expertise in the relevant language, and also the intellectual background needed to understand what was going on in a work like Aristotle’s Categories or On the Soul”. [10] Historian of philosophy Cristina D’ancona likewise says “Even under the ‘Abb¯asid rule, in the eighth and ninth centuries, the Christians of Syria were the unexcelled masters of Aristotelian logic”. [11]

In another work, Peter Adamson writes, “when Muslim aristocrats decided to have Greek science and philosophy translated into Arabic, it was to Christians that they turned”. [12] This is the exact opposite of Alison Abbott’s claim that the translators turned to Persian and Indian scholars to make sense of the Greek manuscripts.

Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies Bernard Lewis likewise wrote that the medieval Muslims found translators “among their Christian or Jewish subjects, or among converts from those religions”. [13] Franz Rosenthal commented quote “Almost all translators were Christians of various churches”. [14]

This is confirmed by Doctor Mohammad Hannan Hassan, a specialist in Islamic civilization, who writes that out of 44 translators listed by a prominent Arab biographer of the Islamic Golden Age, “twenty-eight (64%) are Christians, two are Sabians, one is a Jew, none are Muslims, and thirteen (29.5%) are unknown”. He goes on to say “This study supports Rosenthal’s assertion that almost all translators from Greek and Syriac into Arabic were Christians belonging to various churches”. [15]

Unlike the Muslim scholars for whom they were translating, Christian and Jewish scholars were typically literate not only in their native language but also in Greek, Latin, and Arabic, and sometimes in additional languages such as Hebrew or Syriac. The Christian scholar Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Ibadi was fluent in Greek, Syriac, Persian, and Arabic, and was known by his Arab contemporaries as the Sheikh of Translators. As head of the famous House of Wisdom, the famous library and education center in Persian Baghdad, it was this Christian scholar who led the Translation Movement of the Islamic Golden Age.

In an article in the English Guardian newspaper in 2008, professor of physics Jim Al-Khali claimed “for over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic”. [16] In fact evidence proves the facts are completely the other way around. Greek and Latin were the international languages of science, since they were spoken exclusively by non-native speakers, whereas Arabic was spoken almost exclusively by native (first language), speakers. [17]

Greek and Latin were the international languages of science for nearly 2,000 years, which is why Greek texts had to be translated into Arabic for the benefit of Muslim scholars. For European scholars there was no need to read Arabic in order to study science, since there was ready access to European scientific commentary in Greek and Latin. Arabic was used for science only in majority Arab speaking regions; it was not used as the language of science in Western (which predominantly used Latin), or Eastern Europe (which predominantly used Greek). It was thus not international at all.

Even by the time that Arabic scholars were producing massive volumes of valuable scientific commentary, European scholars did not have to learn any Arabic; a small number of European scholars translated Arabic works into Latin, which was by this point the actual international language of science, and which remained so for the next eight hundred years.

Ironically, by the time these Arabic texts were being translated into Latin the Islamic Golden Age was already in decline, and very little new scientific work was being produced in the Muslim World. Professor David Deming says “In the eleventh century A.D., Hellenistic studies in the Islamic civilization were on the wane, and by the end of the twelfth century A.D. they were essentially extinct”. [18]

Why is it that the true identity of the translators during the Islamic Golden Age is so widely misrepresented? The reason is that the facts about the Christian involvement in the development of science, and in the translation of Greek texts during the Islamic Golden Age, have historically been suppressed, not only by Muslim scholars, but also by secular scholars, and even by Christian scholars. This seems counter-intuitive, and requires some unpacking. Each of these groups suppressed the historical facts at different times, with different motivations.

The first efforts to obscure the Christian contributions to science and the translation of Greek texts into Arabic, were made by the Muslims themselves. As part of their theological struggle with Christianity, many Muslims felt it necessary to depict Christians as having lost, neglected, or squandered the Greek intellectual heritage, and Christians were even accused of having brought about the death of Greek science, a common trope which endures to this day.

Dr Nadia Maria El Cheikh of the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, has written extensively on the subject of the early Muslim strategy of accusing Christians of bringing about the death of Greek science. She says “Muslim authors blamed the decline of science and philosophy on the Christianization of the Roman empire”. [19] El Cheikh records that Muslims commonly attributed the decline of Greek science to the the fourth century, subsequent to Christianity’s rise under Constantine. [20]

Professor Maria Mavourdi, historian at the University of California in Berkeley, notes that during the ninth and tenth centuries, Muslim scholars constructed a narrative that “the sciences died out in Christian Byzantium and were transferred to the Islamic world”. [21]

It may seem ironic that this anti-Christian narrative was invented and promoted at the same time that Muslim scholars were studying Greek texts which had been translated for them by Christian scholars. However it is likely that the Muslims who originated this narrative would have seen it as entirely justifiable, from a theological and historical perspective.

Theologically, Muslims believed that their religion was the truth, and that Christianity was an incomplete divine revelation which had become corrupted and was in need of correction by Allah’s new revelation as communicated to Mohammed. Historically, it was a fact that Muslim armies had been extremely successful, and that their many conquests had resulted not only in the conquest of many kingdoms but also the capture of their immense financial and intellectual wealth, including the vast libraries of Greek literature they found in previously Christian regions such as Alexandria in Egypt, Assyria, Hispania, and the Iberian Peninsula. On this point however, it should be noted that it is not true that Muslims gained Greek texts only through conquest. Although this did happen to a large degree, many other classical works were bought directly from Byzantine Christians by Persian rulers, who paid enormous sums of money for them, and brought them into their libraries for the benefit of Muslim scholars.

Nevertheless, given the military success of the early Islamic era, it is unsurprising that Muslim scholars felt entirely justified in viewing themselves as having taken over the Greek intellectual tradition from the Christians. Muslim claims that Christianity had caused the death of Greek science served as a rationalization for Muslim appropriation of the Greek literature, an explanation for why they were entitled to dominate the Christians and displace them as the custodians of the Greek heritage.

This is demonstrated by the fact that these Muslim anti-Christian polemics are typically placed within an apologetic framework, explicitly arguing that Muslim seizure of the Greek intellectual literature was justified by the failings of the Christians.

One argument was that Christians had forfeited their right to the Greek intellectual tradition, due to their Christian beliefs. Professor Maria Mavourdi says “Arabic scholars presented themselves as having salvaged the pagan Greek heritage from a people whose conversion to Christianity represented such an ideological and political break from their glorious past that it was leading them to destroy its legacy”. [22]

Mavroudi says another argument used by Muslim scholars against the Christians was that “neither they nor the Jews but only the Muslims possess philosophy” and that they had “ falsely appropriated the achievements of the ancient Greeks”. [23] It was further argued that since the Byzantines were Christians, and the classical Greeks were pagans, the Byzantines were not the legitimate heirs of the Greek intellectual tradition.

Mavroudi explains that such arguments as these were repeated by Muslim scholars for centuries, with the main claim being that Christianity was incompatible with philosophy and that Christianity had consequently destroyed Greek science. [24]

Mavroudi notes that these arguments are still occasionally found in modern scholarly literature, citing Dimitri Gutas, professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Yale University, who claims that quote “philosphy died a lingering death before Islam appeared” end quote, and who attributes its revival to the ninth century Muslim philosopher Abu Yusuf Ya’qub ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi. However, this position is only marginal in current scholarship. [25]

Christians during the Islamic Golden Age were clearly aware of these claims, and obviously took them seriously, since they wrote strong responses to oppose the Muslim narrative. Maria Mavroudi cites two ninth century Byzantine Christian texts presenting counter-arguments. [26]

However, the obscuring of Christian involvement in the development of Greek science and the translation of Greek texts into Arabic, was not merely an anti-Christian argument originating from Muslims. In fact it was repeated by Christians of the Renaissance, who wished to depict themselves as the true revivers of the Greek intellectual heritage, and who created the myth of the Dark Ages in order to depict the Christians of the Middle Ages as anti-intellectual and scientifically ignorant. In this view, Greek science was lost after the fall of Rome, and not restored until the Renaissance era. Mavroudi says “We now know that this argument was created by Renaissance humanists who sought to dismiss earlier scholastic Aristotelianism”. [27]

Finally, a couple of centuries later, secular scholars repeated the claim of an intellectual Dark Age during which Christians neglected Greek texts and learning. The seventeenth century scholar Edward Gibbon was one of the earliest secular historians to make this claim, and his work not only popularized the idea but gave it such credibility that it was continued well into the twentieth century. Gibbon poured scorn on the idea of any scientific progress during the Middle Ages, and ridiculed the medieval scholars of England’s most famous universities, saying “The schools of Oxford and Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous science”. [28]

In the post-Enlightenment era, when secular interests were gaining social acceptance and political power, non-religious and anti-religious figures found this a useful weapon with which to attack their religious opponents, and discredit Christianity. Two nineteenth century writers in the United states, Andrew Dickson White and John William Draper, were responsible for establishing what is known in the history of science as the Conflict Thesis, arguing not only that science and religion are incompatible, but that Christianity in particular was responsible for both the death of Greek science and the suppression of scientific knowledge and advancement during the centuries between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance.

This narrative has long been abandoned by modern historians, though it is still preserved in the occasional academic work. Two recent books attempting to revive this model are “The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World” (2018), by classical scholar Catherine Nixley, and “The Closing of the Western Mind” (2007), by historian Charles Freeman. However, both of these works have received only a lukewarm response from mainstream scholarship, which shows no interest in returning to the Conflict Thesis.

Nevertheless, scholarly works on the history of the Islamic Golden Age still has a tendency to obscure the Christian involvement in the work of translating the Greek literature for the benefit of the Muslims who could not read it. This is particularly apparent in works written by Arab and Muslim scholars. In their article on the translation movement of the Islamic Golden Age, Drs Hala Al-Khalidi and Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani of the University of Jordan say “Arabs borrowed from all known cultures” , citing the Arabs borrowing knowledge from Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nabateans, and Chaldeans. However they never mention the fact that the Arabs of the Islamic Golden Age relied heavily on Christian translators and scholars, nor do they mention the Jewish scholars who also made significant contributions. [29]

Consequently it is no surprise that professor of philosophy Peter Adamson comments, “Amongst the understudied fields in mainstream history is the significant role many Christian scholars had in the Islamic Golden Age”. [30]

The Islamic Golden Age really shouldn’t be a kind of historical battleground over which various special interest groups fight in order to present their members as the most significant, while obscuring the contributions of those outside their group. On the contrary, it should be remembered as an age of extraordinary cooperation between scholars of a wide range of ethnic origins (including Jews, Arabs, Persians, Egyptians, and various Western Europeans), holding a number of different religious views (including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism).

The Pakistani Muslim Youtube channel Al Muqaddimah has an excellent series on the Islamic Golden Age, which is introduced with great care in the first episode, in which it is described accurately as an era of scholarly collaboration between Muslims and members of other faiths, as well as people of various different ethnic groups. Please watch the entire video, and subscribe to his channel; it’s an excellent source of detailed, well researched historical information on the history of Islam.

The spirit of cooperation during the Islamic Golden Age was remarkable, especially given the fact that it emerged at a time of international and inter-faith conflict. It is also a reminder that science is a universal human enterprise, and does not belong exclusively to any particular culture or ethnic group, regardless of which group or culture makes the greatest contribution. This is definitely one of the most important and valuable aspects of the Islamic Golden Age, and is of particular relevance to the modern era.

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[1] “In Persia and India, unlike Greece, the scientific traditions were still very much alive. And so it was to Persian and Indian scholars that the translators turned when they needed to make scientific, as well as linguistic, sense of the old Greek manuscripts.”, Alison Abbott, “Rebuilding the Past,” News, Nature, 15 December 2004, https://www.nature.com/articles/432794a.

[2] “Islamic scholars translated their voluminous writings from Greek into Arabic and then produced new medical knowledge based on those texts.”, Rachel Hajar, “The Air of History Part III: The Golden Age in Arab Islamic Medicine An Introduction,” Heart Views 14.1 (2013): 43.

[3] [3] “Syriacs, for instance, played an important role in the transfer of many parts of the Arabic heritage. They played the mediator’s role because Arabs did not understand Greek while Syriacs were in contact with Greece for more than ten centuries. (Hitti, 1959:174).”, Hala Al-Khalidi and Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani, “Facets from the Translation Movement in Classic Arab Culture,” Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences 205 (2015): 570.”; Modelled after the ancient Library of Alexandria, Bayt al-Hikma was a center of scholarly activities where books from the Greek, Syriac, and Persian languages were translated into Arabic by expert Arabists.”, Hala Al-Khalidi and Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani, “Facets from the Translation Movement in Classic Arab Culture,” Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences 205 (2015): 571; “He was a Nestorian doctor that had his fingerprint on the most important works of this school. He translated major medical books and parts of the Organon by Aristotle into Syriac.”, Hala Al-Khalidi and Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani, “Facets from the Translation Movement in Classic Arab Culture,” Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences 205 (2015): 571; “Arabs were able to seize this opportunity; they devoured knowledge like a hungry wolf with a lot of innate talent and potential. Thus, they translated from Persian, Greek and Syriac into Arabic.”, Hala Al-Khalidi and Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani, “Facets from the Translation Movement in Classic Arab Culture,” Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences 205 (2015): 575.

[4] “Immediately after understanding the role played by Muslim translators throughout history in building a distinctive, superior and distinguished culture, contemporary generations of Arab and Muslim translators should realize the significance of their role which they have to play in the advancement of their modern societies as well as their responsibility towards their nation.”, Hala Al-Khalidi and Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani, “Facets from the Translation Movement in Classic Arab Culture,” Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences 205 (2015): 575.

[5] “In both of these periods, Muslim translators first translated the Greek knowledge into Arabic and then into other languages.”, Bahattin Karagözoğlu, “Contribution of Muslim Scholars to Science and Technology,” in Science and Technology from Global and Historical Perspectives, ed. Bahattin Karagözoğlu (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017).

[6] “Muslim translators set about decoding these ancient texts, including the works of the great philosophers Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates.”, Tanya Gulevich, Understanding Islam and Muslim Traditions: An Introduction to the Religious Practices, Celebrations, Festivals, Observances, Beliefs, Folklore, Customs, and Calendar System of the World’s Muslim Communities, Including an Overview of Islamic History and Geography (Detroit, Mich.: Omnigraphics, 2004).

[7] “It is entirely due to the Muslim translators that the rare books of Hippocrates and Galen were saved from extinction (Khan 1997; Campbell 2002.”, Tanya Gulevich, Understanding Islam and Muslim Traditions: An Introduction to the Religious Practices, Celebrations, Festivals, Observances, Beliefs, Folklore, Customs, and Calendar System of the World’s Muslim Communities, Including an Overview of Islamic History and Geography (Detroit, Mich.: Omnigraphics, 2004).

[8] “The famous representatives of Greek knowledge among the Muslims of the ninth and tenth centuries, al-Kindi (died after 870), his pupil as-Sarakhsi (died 899), al-Farabi (died 950), Abu Sulaiman as-Sijistani (died ca. 985), al-Amiri (died 992) and, of course, all those of later times, knew neither Syriac nor Greek.”, Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge, 1992), 6.

[9] “When philosophers like Avicenna and Averroes read Aristotle, it was never in Greek — a language of which they were ignorant.”, Peter Adamson, Philosophy in the Islamic World (Oxford University Press, 2016), 22.

[10] “These Christians could offer expertise in the relevant language, and also the intellectual background needed to understand what was going on in a work like Aristotle’s Categories or On the Soul.”, Peter Adamson, Philosophy in the Islamic World (Oxford University Press, 2016), 22–23.

[11] “Even under the ‘Abb¯asid rule, in the eighth and ninth centuries, the Christians of Syria were the unexcelled masters of Aristotelian logic: the caliph al-Mahd¯i (reigned 775–85) asked Timoteus I, the Nestorian katholikos, to provide a translation of the Topics.”, Cristina D’Ancona, “Greek into Arabic: Neoplatonism in Translation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 20.

[12] “From late antiquity to the rise of Islam, Greek had survived as a language of intellectual activity among Christians, especially in Syria. So when Muslim aristocrats decided to have Greek science and philosophy translated into Arabic, it was to Christians that they turned.”, Peter Adamson, “Arabic Translators Did Far More than Just Preserve Greek Philosophy — Peter Adamson | Aeon Ideas,” Aeon, 4 November 2016, https://aeon.co/ideas/arabic-translators-did-far-more-than-just-preserve-greek-philosophy.

[13] “Where translators were needed for practical purposes, Muslim rulers could always find them among their Christian or Jewish subjects, or among converts from those religions.”, Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe (New York; London: W.W. Norton, 2001), 8.

[14] “Almost all translators were Christians of various churches.”, Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge, 1992), 6.

[15] “Out of the fourty-four names of translators from foreign into Arabic language in IN’s list, twenty-eight (64%) are Christians, two are Sabians, one is a Jew, none are Muslims, and thirteen (29.5%) are unknown. This study supports Rosenthal’s assertion that almost all translators from Greek and Syriac into Arabic were Christians belonging to various churches.”, Mohammad Hannan Hassan, “Where Were the Jews in the Development of Sciences in Medieval Islam? A Quantitative Analysis of Two Medieval Muslim Biographical Notices,” Hebrew Union College Annual 81 (2010): 113–114.

[16] “What is remarkable, for instance, is that for over 700 years the international language of science was Arabic (which is why I describe it as “Arabic science”).”, Jim Al-Khalili, “Jim Al-Khalili: It’s Time to Herald the Arabic Science That Prefigured Darwin and Newton,” The Guardian, 30 January 2008, sec. Opinion, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jan/30/religion.world.

[17] “However, the medieval linguae francae of science and religion were Greek and Latin, which by then had become languages without native speakers.”, Michèle Goyens, Pieter de Leemans, and An Smets, Science Translated: Latin and Vernacular Translations of Scientific Treatises in Medieval Europe (Leuven University Press, 2008), xi.

[18] “In the eleventh century A.D., Hellenistic studies in the Islamic civilization were on the wane, and by the end of the twelfth century A.D. they were essentially extinct.”, David Deming, Science and Technology in World History/ Volume 2, Early Christianity, the Rise of Islam, and the Middle Ages (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publ., 2010), 105.

[19] “Like the Hellenes of late antiquity, who were convinced that the rise of Christianity meant the end of Greek science, Muslim authors blamed the decline of science and philosophy on the Christianization of the Roman empire.”, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 36 (London: Harvard University Press, 2004), 106.

[20] “Writing in the Almohad court, Abu Yahya b. Mas’ada similarly places the blame for the decline of science on Constantine the Great:”, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 36 (London: Harvard University Press, 2004), 108; “They all stress that the decline began in the fourth century A.D. and that Christianity was its root cause.”, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 36 (London: Harvard University Press, 2004), 108.

[21] “The claim that philosophy and the sciences died out in Christian Byzantium and were transferred to the Islamic world can be found in a number of ninth- and tenth-century Arabic sources, edited and translated from the nineteenth century onwards and mostly taken at face value since.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 38.

[22] “Arabic scholars presented themselves as having salvaged the pagan Greek heritage from a people whose conversion to Christianity represented such an ideological and political break from their glorious past that it was leading them to destroy its legacy.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 39.

[23] “In a different text, an anti-Christian polemic titled The Reply against the Christians — where the objective is to prove that neither they nor the Jews but only the Muslims possess philosophy (and therefore correct theology) — al-Jahiz denies that the Byzantines have any philosophy and science of their own; instead, he explains, they falsely appropriated the achievements of the ancient Greeks and pretend this wisdom is theirs, although the Byzantines are Christian and the ancient Greeks were pagan.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 39.

[24] “Arguments along the same lines were repeated by several authors around the same time and into the next centuries; they eventually became a literary topos picked up from earlier tradition. Central is the insistence that Christianity as a religion and the Christian emperors as its institutional representatives were inimical to philosophy and science and caused its destruction, for which reason these intellectual goods no longer exist among the Christians.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 39–40.

[25] “The contribution by Dimitri Gutas, titled “Origins in Baghdad,” asserts that “philosophy died a lingering death before Islam appeared” and credits the philosopher al-Kindl (c.800-c.870) for resurrecting it with the help of the products of the Greek-into-Arabic transla tion movement which had been jump-started, after the death of living philosophy in Greek, through “its physical remains in the form of manuscripts and libraries” and the “much reduced, enfeebled, and diluted philosophical curricula and theological applications” of philosophy.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 37.

[26] “This type of anti-Christian Muslim rhetoric appears to have received a tailor-made Byzantine response in at least one surviving Greek text: the Life of Kosmas of Maiouma and John of Damascus written in 842–43 by Michael the Synkellos, a Greek-educated Christian from Jerusalem who spent much of his life in Constantinople and belonged to the circle of patriarch Methodios.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 40; “A similar Byzantine response to the Muslim insistence that philosophy and science were dead among the Christians can be found in the Life of Constantine Cyril, the apostle of the Slavs, which was composed soon after the saint’s death in 859.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 41.

[27] “This rapid look at the twelfth- and thirteenth-century translations from Greek into Latin brings us to the argument, presented earlier, that ancient Greek science and philosophy were known in medieval Latin through translations from the Arabic, while direct recourse to Greek did not take place until the Renaissance. We now know that this argument was created by Renaissance humanists who sought to dismiss earlier scholastic Aristotelianism.”, Maria Mavroudi, “Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition,” Speculum 90.1 (2015): 54.

[28] “The schools of Oxford and Cambridge were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous science; and they are still tainted with the vices of their origin.”, Edward Gibbon, The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon: With Memoirs of His Life and Writing Composed by Himself, Illustrated from His Letters with Occasional Notes and Narrative, vol. 5 (B. Blahe, 1837).

[29] “Arabs borrowed from all known cultures. For example, they relied on Greek knowledge when dealing with philosophy, medicine, engineering, astronomy and music. Arabs relied on Indians as they studied the stars, biographies, literature, history and law. They gained from Nabataeans and Chaldeans in the fields of agriculture, astrology, magic and incantations. Also, Arabs depended on Egyptians in the fields of chemistry and anatomy.”, Hala Al-Khalidi and Basma Ahmad Sedki Dajani, “Facets from the Translation Movement in Classic Arab Culture,” Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences 205 (2015): 572.

[30] “Amongst the understudied fields in mainstream history is the significant role many Christian scholars had in the Islamic Golden Age.”, Peter Adamson, “Arabic Translators Did Far More than Just Preserve Greek Philosophy — Peter Adamson | Aeon Ideas,” Aeon, 4 November 2016, https://aeon.co/ideas/arabic-translators-did-far-more-than-just-preserve-greek-philosophy.