32 Introduction 



Muslims had realized the need of science, mainly Greek science, in 

 order to establish their own culture and to consolidate their dominion, 

 even so the Latins realized the need of science, Arabic science, in order 

 to be able to light Islam with equal arms and vindicate their own aspira- 

 tions. For the most intelligent Spaniards and Englishmen the obligation 

 to know Arabic was as clear as the obligation to know English, French 

 or German for the Japanese of the Meiji era. Science is power. The 

 Muslim rulers knew that from the beginning, the Latin leaders had to 

 learn it, somewhat reluctantly, but they finally did learn it. The prestige 

 of Arabic science began relatively late in the West, say in the twelfth 

 century, and it increased gradually at the time when Arabic science was 

 already degenerating. The two movements, the Arabic progress and 

 the Latin one, were out of phase. This is a general rule of life, by the 

 way, rather than an exception, and it applies to individuals as well as 

 to nations. A man generally does his best in comparative obscurity 

 and becomes famous only when his vigor is diminishing; that is all right 

 as far as he is concerned, for it is clear that solitude and silence are the 

 best conditions of good, enduring, work. 



The scientific tradition as it was poured from Arabic vessels into 

 Latin ones was often perverted. The new translators did not have the 

 advantage which the Arabic translators had enjoyed; the latter had been 

 able to see Greek culture in the perspective of a thousand years or 

 more; the Latin translators could not see the Arabic novelties from a 

 sufficient distance, and they could not always choose intelligently be- 

 tween them. As to the Greek classics they came to them with a double 

 prestige, Greek and Arabic. It is as if the Greek treasures, of which 

 Latin scholars were now dimly conscious, were more valuable in their 

 Arabic form; they had certainly become more glamorous. The trans- 

 lation of the Almagest made c. 1175 by Gerard of Cremona (XII-2) 

 from the Arabic, superseded a translation made directly from the Greek 

 in Sicily fifteen years earlier! 



To return to the Arabic writings ( as distinct from Arabic translations 

 of Greek writings ) some of the best were translated such as the works of 

 al-Khwarizmi, al-Razi, al-Farghani, al-Battani, Ibn STna; others 

 of equal value escaped attention, e.g., some books of 'Umar al- 

 Khayyam, al-BirunT, Nasir al-din AL-Tusi; others still appeared too late 

 to be considered, this is the case of the great Arabic authors of the 

 fourteenth century .^^ By that time Latin science had become inde- 

 pendent of the contemporary Arabic writings and contemptuous of 

 them. On the other hand, the Latin (and Hebrew) translations from 

 the Arabic include a shockingly large mass of astrological and alchemical 

 treatises and other rubbish. Some of the astrological and alchemical 

 writings, it should be noted, are valuable or contain valuable materials 

 and are to some extent the forerunners of our own astronomical and 

 chemical literature, but many others are worthless, or rather worse than 



^ The only translations taken into account here are those composed in the Middle 

 Ages for actual use, not the translations made by philologists in the seventeenth 

 century or later for archaeological reasons. 



