92
a refugee Umayyad prince who had
escaped the Abbasid revolution,
became a magnet for scholars
from the East, and its libraries
became a repository of precious
ancient texts that had been
translated into Arabic.
In 967, the French cleric and
scholar Gerbert of Aurillac (who in
999 would become Pope Sylvester
II) arrived in Spain for a three-year
period of study at a monastery in
Catalonia. There he had access
to manuscripts that had filtered
over the border from Muslim-held
al-Andalus. He took back to France
knowledge of Arabic technology
such as the water clock and theastrolabe, and of a type of abacus
that used a decimal system.
This was the first example of the
system’s use in medieval Europe.
It was a small beginning, and one
paralleled in southern Italy where a
medical school was established at
Salerno in the 9th century. A few
Islamic manuscripts reached the
school in the early years, but many
more arrived in the late 11th
century when Muslim doctor
Constantine the African returned
from Qairawan in Tunisia. He had
gone there to study medicine, and
brought back with him works such
as the Complete Art of Medicine by
Ali ibn al-Abbas al-Majusi (known
in the West as Haly Abbas), parts
of which he then translated into
Latin. This translation gave Western
doctors and scholars access to
comparatively advanced Muslim
medical knowledge.THE FOUNDING OF BAGHDAD
Classical Greek texts arrived
directly from the Byzantine Empire
to the West (in particular Pisa,
which had a trading quarter in
Constantinople), including works
by the philosopher Aristotle. The
main channel for the transmission
of Islamic learning into Europe,
however, continued to be Spain. As
Islamic Spain shrank, pressurized
by the Reconquista, the flow of
materials accelerated. The Christian
reconquest spread increasingly into
Muslim emirates until, in 1085,
Alfonso VI of Castile captured
Toledo. The city became a center
for the translation of Arabic works
by an international group including
the Englishman Herbert of Ketton,
Slav Hermann of Carinthia, the
Frenchman Raymond of Marseilles,
Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Ezra,
and Italian Gerhard of Cremona.
In the mid-12th century, the groupThe ancient Greek thinker Aristotle
teaches Muslim students how to
measure the positions of the Sun,
Moon, and stars in this imagined
scene from an Arabic manuscript.US_086-093_Harun_al_Rashid.indd 92 16/02/2016 16:38
93
translated many Arabic texts
into Latin, including works on
mathematics, medicine, and
philosophy. Western Europe now
had access to Ptolemy’s Almagest,
and to the medical works of Galen,
as well as access to new works by
Arabic writers who had built on
or summarized the work of their
ancient predecessors, such as ibn
Sina’s Canon of Medicine. This
five-book encyclopedia became one
of the most widely used treatises in
European medical schools until the
16th century.Royal patronage
This transmission of knowledge
to the West mirrored the process
by which the Islamic world had
absorbed Greek learning during
the great period of translation
into Arabic in the 9th and 10th
centuries. Noble and royal patrons
played similar roles in both phases
of the transmission. King Roger II
of Sicily (which by 1091 had been
reconquered from the Muslims)
invited Arab scholar al-Idrisi to his
court in 1138 with a commission
to construct a map of the world
based on Islamic geographical
and cartographic works. The result,
which took more than 15 years to
complete, was by far the most
accurate world map yet available
to Europeans, and showed areas
as far east as Korea. The map
was accompanied by the Book of
Pleasant Journeys into Faraway
Lands, in which al-Idrisi’s royal
patron could have read of wondrous
things such as cannibals in Borneo,
and the gold trade in Ghana.A tradition of learning
Roger’s grandson Frederick II, Holy
Roman Emperor from 1220 until
1250, continued his grandfather’s
tradition of sponsoring translations
of Arabic texts. A remarkablepolymath who knew at least four
languages, Roger so impressed his
contemporaries with his learning
that he became known as Stupor
Mundi (“the Marvel of the World”).
Among his protégés were the
Scottish scholar Michael Scot, who
translated key works of Aristotle
on zoology, and the Pisan Leonardo
Fibonacci, who had been sent
by his merchant family to study
mathematics at Bougie in Muslim
North Africa. There Fibonacci
learned of the decimal system, and
in 1202 he published the Book of
Calculations, the most detailed
account yet seen in Europe of the
Arabic system of numbering.
By the early 13th century,
the Abbasid Empire had all but
collapsed. The difficulties of ruling
such a far-flung empire and the
effects of a series of civil wars had
led to key provinces such as Spain,
Tunisia, and Egypt breaking away
to be ruled by their own caliphs.
Even in Baghdad, where the
Abbasid caliphs clung on, they
were only notionally sovereign. Real
power was held by other dynastiesTHE MEDIEVAL WORLD
such as the Shia Buyids, and, from
1055, the Seljuqs, a Turkish group
originating in central Asia. The final
blow was dealt by the Mongols,
who surged westward into the
Islamic world in the early 13th
century. In 1258, the Mongol Great
Khan Möngke unleashed an army
against Iraq, which laid siege to
and then sacked Baghdad, inflicting
an appalling massacre on its
inhabitants. The last ruling
Abbasid caliph al-Musta’sim was
executed, and political and cultural
leadership of the Islamic world
passed first to the Mamluks in Cairo
and then, after their conquest of
Egypt in 1517, to the Ottoman Turks.
By this time Europeans had
rediscovered Greek and Roman
learning in almost every field of
scholarship through the medium of
Arabic texts. It had taken centuries
for the new material to be absorbed,
and a further wave of interest in
classical manuscripts in the 15th
century to spark the Renaissance
in Europe. The House of Wisdom
founded by the Abbasid caliphs
had played a key role in ensuring
the survival of Greek and Roman
science in the Islamic world,
allowing its transmission centuries
later to Christian Europe. ■Roger II invited scholar al-Idrisi to
create an accurate map of the known
world in 1138. Al-Idrisi presented the
planisphere, and an accompanying
book, to his patron in 1154.[Roger II of Sicily] is
responsible for singular
innovations and for marvelous
inventions, such as no prince
has ever before realized.
Al-Idrisi, c.1138US_086-093_Harun_al_Rashid.indd 93 15/02/2016 16:41