middle generation of the 800s—that a network of translators and commenta-
tors sprang up in Baghdad. Sporadic translations of Greek texts had appeared
before this point; and there were long-standing schools of Christian and other
non-Islamic scholars in various outlying places. But their work had produced
neither novelty nor attention. In 830 Caliph al-MaÁmun—the same who at-
tempted to impose an Inquisition on behalf of MuÀtazilite theology—estab-
lished a “House of Wisdom” at the capital, a bureau of translation supporting
many scholars.^9 For the next three generations this network was active in
translating Greek science, mathematics, logic, and philosophy.
It should be stressed that this group was tangential to Islamic intellectual
life. Most of its members were non-Muslims: they were Nestorian Christians
(an excommunicated sect which had left the Byzantine Empire for Persia
around 430 c.e.); a few were Jacobites (a wing of the Monophysite heresy in
Syria of the mid-500s), Sabians of the old Babylonian star worshippers, occa-
sionally Zoroastrians.^10 They did not take part in the controversies of the
Àulama over theological-philosophical issues. Their niche at first was as carriers
of practical skills, as court physicians, astrologers, and astronomers. Since
teaching in these professions took place by personal apprenticeship, this group
had some concern with the transmission of ideas and texts. Once a critical
mass of such experts was assembled at Baghdad, it began the usual intellectual
struggle for attention, in this case concentrated on their distinctive cultural
capital, their access to textual traditions. Their claim to fame was not origi-
nality but possession of more texts, and eventually better translations.
The science, medicine, and mathematics thus introduced were religiously
neutral. But they did establish an occupational base for intellectuals outside
the career of Muslim religious scholar, primarily as court physician or court
astrologer. Later we find that many of the prominent Muslim exponents of
falsafa, from Rhazes and Ibn Sina down to Ibn Rushd (Averroës) and AbuÁl-
Barakat, were doctors. Philosophical creativity within these roles did not come
about until the translation movement was over. During the early generations,
idea imports were a substitute for creativity.
The main area in which this did not hold was in mathematics and astron-
omy. In the first generation of the House of Wisdom appeared al-Khwarizmi,
from a Zoroastrian family. He coined the term al-jabr, translated by the
Europeans as “algebra,” while “algorithm” was taken from his name; he laid
out basic principles for solving equations of the first and second degree. A
generation later the Sabian Thabit ibn Qurra developed versions of integral
calculus, spherical trigonometry, and analytic and non-Euclidean geometry, and
reformed Ptolemaic astronomy (DSB, 1981: 7:358–365; 13:288–292). Trans-
lations were made of Greek mathematics, from Euclid and Archimedes to
Plutarch and Diophantus, along with the science of Aristotle and Galen. It is
404 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths