28 Introduction 



and the Jews living in the Near East, in the Dar al-islam, were gen- 

 erally good linguists, born dragomans; it is clear that if the translations 

 were to be made, they would be the men to make them; the translations 

 could not be completed without their help. Yet they were made for 

 Arabic and Muslim usage, by order of the Muslim rulers. To say that 

 there was no Arabic science is like saying that there is no American sci- 

 ence; the truth and untruth of both statements are of the same order. 

 The Arabs were standing on the shoulders of their Greek forerunners 

 just as the Americans are standing on the shoulders of their European 

 ones. There is nothing wrong in that. It is the fundamental law of 

 evolution. We are all the sons and followers, imitators and critics of 

 other men; in most cases we are much smaller than our ancestors, and 

 if we have enough intelligence and grace we feel that we are like dwarfs 

 standing upon the shoulders of giants. Sometimes the descendants are 

 greater than their forefathers. What makes the study of human tradi- 

 tion so deeply moving is just that, the multitude and variousness of acci- 

 dents and above all, the unpredictable apparition of giants at one time or 

 another, here or there. 



Some of the giants of mediaeval times belonged to the Arabic cul- 

 ture, mathematicians and astronomers like al-Khwarizmi (IX-1), al- 

 Farghani (IX-1), al-Battani (IX-2), Abu-l-Wafa' (X-2), 'Umar 

 Khayyam (XI-1), AL-BmiJNi (XI-1); philosophers like al-Farabi 

 (X-1), al-Ghazzali (XI-2), Ibn Rushd (XII-2), Ibn Khaldun (XIV-2), 

 physicians like al-Razi (IX-2), Ishaq al-Israili (X-1),'Ali ibn 'Abbas 

 (X-2), Abu-l-Qasim (X-2), Ibn SIna (XI-1), Maimonides (XII-2). 

 This enumeration could be greatly extended. Few of these men were 

 Arabs and not all of them were Muslims, but they all belonged essen- 

 tially to the same cultural group, and their language was Arabic. This 

 illustrates the absurdity of trying to appraise mediaeval thought on the 

 basis of Latin writings alone. For centuries the Latin scientific books 

 hardly counted; they were out-of-date and outlandish. Arabic was the 

 international language of science to a degree which had never been 

 equalled by another language before (except Greek) and has never 

 been repeated since. It was the language not of one people, one na- 

 tion, one faith, but of many peoples, many nations, many faiths. 



The best Arabic scientists were not satisfied with the Greek and 

 Hindu science which they inherited. They admired and respected the 

 treasures which had fallen into their hands, but they were just as 

 "modern" and greedy as we are, and wanted more. They criticized 

 Euclid, Apollonios and Archimedes, discussed Ptolemy, tried to im- 

 prove the astronomical tables and to get rid of the causes of error lurk- 

 ing in the accepted theories. They facilitated the evolution of algebra 

 and trigonometry and prepared the way for the European algebraists 

 of the sixteenth century. Occasionally they were able to define new 

 concepts, to state new problems, to tie new knots in the network of 

 earlier traditions. 



That network, Oriental-Greek-Arabic, is our network. The neglect 

 of Arabic science and the corresponding misunderstanding of our own 



