2023-11-24 06:24:07
Talented translators allowed Muslims to access these Greek and Latin texts. Scholars such as Yahya ibn Masawaih (whom the West calls John Mesue) and his student Hunayn ibn Ishaq (Johannitius in Latin) produced more than fifty translations between them. These two Syrians of Nestorian obedience had been forced to flee to Persia, because they were considered heretics in the Eastern Roman Empire.
Their ability to speak several languages, notably Greek and Syriac (a Semitic language close to Arabic), was particularly sought following. In other cities of the emerging Islamic world, Muslim patrons enlisted their services. In Baghdad, the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun entrusted Hunayn ibn Ishaq with the supervision of the translators of the famous Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom.
Au 10e century, with an ever-expanding corpus of Greek, Persian and Sanskrit works translated into Arabic, Arabic medicine became the most sophisticated medicine in the world. Christians, Jews, Hindus and scholars of other faiths considered Arabic to be the language of science. Doctors of different faiths worked, discussed and studied together with Arabic as their common language.
The Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad underwent a long period of intellectual experimentation that lasted throughout the 10e et 11e centuries. Among its many eminent figures was al-Razi, or Rhazes in Latin, a Persian pharmacologist and physician who headed the Baghdad hospital. But the brightest star in the Baghdad firmament was undoubtedly the extraordinary ibn Sinna, better known as Avicenna. A doctor from the age of 18, his magnum opus, the Kitab al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (the Canon of Medicine) is one of the most famous medical works of all time, in addition to being an extraordinary exercise in disciplinary and cultural syncretism. Avicenna’s attempt to harmonize the medical practices of the Greek thinker Galen with the philosophy of Aristotle reveals the multifaceted nature of our debt to Muslim scholarship, which not only breathed new life into Greek authors, but also brought forth new patterns of thought for the centuries to come. This reconciliation of practical science, thought and religion led European doctors to study Canon until the 18the century.
On the western borders of the Islamic world, Muslim Spain also experienced a period of intellectual growth. At 10e century, Córdoba was a cultural capital and the largest city in Europe, and some called it the “Ornament of the World”. The city was also a hotbed for study and exploration.
Essential volumes in any scientific library were preserved in Cordoba. For example, Of medical matter (Treatise on materia medica), famous work of Dioscorides, written at the time of Emperor Nero, in the 1is century AD, was translated into Arabic in Cordoba, on the orders of Caliph Abd al-Rahman III. This practical study of the medicinal properties of plants and herbs, such as cannabis and peppermint, was now accessible to more intellectuals than ever before.
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