the 100,000-volume library that had been assembled by Abu Talib. In the West, however,
the victorious Spanish and French largely saved the Muslim inheritance and incorporated
it into Christendom. In its turn, the scholastic movement in medieval French schools and
universities played a decisive role in the preservation and synthesis of this Greco-Arabic
knowledge.
The place of philosophy in medieval Islam—at least until the synthetic work of al-
Ghazali (Algazel; 1058–1111) and the condemnation for heresy of Ibn Rushd (Averroes;
1126–1198) at Cordova in 1195—differed from that in western Christendom. Latin
Christians, following the lead of Augustine of Hippo, who associated the term theologia
with pagan religious rites and Neoplatonist religious thought, preferred the term vera
philosophia for reflections on the moral Christian life and its thought, and they used such
words as doctrina and studia sacrae scripturae for exegetical studies of the Bible. It was
not until Peter Abélard in the 12th century that the term theologia again began to receive
currency as a description of a specific subject of pious scholarly endeavor. Yet even then,
philosophy and theology were still practiced by the same group of people: Christian
monks and clerics, whether in monasteries or at the ecclesiastically dominated cathedral
schools and later the universities. On the other hand, in ‘Abbasid Baghdad and Umayyad
Spain a clearcut division was made—not generally to the liking of religious leaders—
between Islamic theology (‘ilm al-kalam) and philosophical discussion (al-falsafa).
Kalam was the study of the Word of God revealed in the Qur’an and of the Hadith (the
traditional acount of the prophet Muhammad’s sayings and actions); falsafa concerned
itself with natural-scientific and philosophical knowledge deriving mostly from Greek but
also from Persian and Indian non-Arabic sources. Unlike its place in the Latin world,
philosophy here was not the prerogative of theologians but was associated closely with
the study of medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. This is illustrated clearly by the
medical interests of such important philosophers as Ibn Sina (Avicenna; 980–1037) and
Ibn Rushd.
The first intellectual contacts of French scholars with Arabic learning were restricted
to scientific fields. Paradigmatic is the case of Gerbert of Aurillac (ca. 945–1003), who
studied mathematics and astronomy in Catalonia between 967 and 970, albeit not from
the Arabic sources but from Latin translations collected in the library of the monastery of
Ripoll. Arabic medical works, among others, were soon to be translated by Constantinus
Africanus (d. ca. 1087), a Muslim who had been converted to Christianity. He is famous
for his Pantegni, a reworking of ‘Ali ibn al-‘Abbas’s Kitab al-maliki. This work was to
help William of Conches (ca. 1085–ca.1154) in his formulation of a new philosophy of
nature, which was criticized forcibly by William of Saint-Thierry (1070/90–1148) for its
strong materialism and its independence from theology. William of Conches’s
Dragmaticon, which incorporates Greek and especially Arabic ideas, substantially
influenced the cosmological and encyclopedic writings of Alain de Lille (ca. 1115/20–
1203) and Thomas de Cantimpré (1201– ca. 1270). In general, it might be said that the
influx of Arabic medical and astronomical writings helped develop an awareness in
medieval Europe—especially in the 12th-century French schools—that the cosmos and
the natural world could be understood without recourse to Christian mystical and
religious interpretations of the Middle Platonist or Neoplatonist sort.
Another important aspect of these early contacts between French and Muslim scholars
was the apologetic one. Peter the Venerable (1092/94–1156), reform abbot of Cluny, held
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 110