Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

126 • The Making of Islamic Sciencein search of Ptolemy’s Almagest. He found a copy in Toledo. Once inToledo, “seeing the abundance of books in Arabic on every subject…helearned the Arabic language, in order to be able to translate” (Lemay1981, 174). Over the next three decades, Gerard was to produce overeighty translations of scientific and philosophical texts from Arabic, nodoubt with the help of a team of assistants. These translations are notof high quality, but their importance lies in the introduction of a vastcorpus of Islamic scientific and philosophical texts to Latin scholarsand in their subsequent impact on the history of science as well as onthe discourse between Christianity and science.It is important to have a closer look at what Gerard translated,for it sheds light on the interests of Latin scholars of the time. It alsoprovides us important clues to understand the nature of subsequentdiscourse on the relationship between science and Islam on theone hand and science and Christianity on the other. Eighty-twoworks listed in the incomplete bibliography of his works preparedby his companions in Toledo can be divided into seven categories:(i) logic–three works; (ii) geometry, mathematics, optics, weights,dynamics–seventeen works; (iii) astronomy and astrology–twelveworks; (vi) philosophy–eleven works; (v) medicine–twenty-four works;(vi) alchemy–three works; (vii) geomancy and divination–four works(Lemay 1981, 173–92). Among the originally Greek works translatedfrom Arabic are the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, Ptolemy’s Almagest,and Euclid’s Elements. Works by Muslims translated by Gerard andhis companions include al-Khwarizmi’s Algebra, al-Farabi’s ShortCommentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics, Banu Musa’s Geometria, al-Kindi’s De aspectibus (optics), Thabit ibn Qurra’s liber Qarastonis,twelve works on astronomy and astrology including al-Farghani’sLiber Alfagani in quibusdam collectis scientie astrorum ett radicum motuumplanetarum et est 30 differntiarum, Jabir bin Aflah’s De astronomia libriIX, and several works by al-Razi, including his Liber Almansorius, theshorter of al-Razi’s great medical works.The future European discourse on Islamic scientific traditionwas shaped to a certain extent by what was translated at this time.It is interesting to note that these translations were done at a timewhen many important contributions of the Islamic scientific andphilosophical traditions had yet to appear. It is also interesting to