This was without question the most significant event of medieval times for the development of science, mathematics, astronomy and medicine in Western Europe. The city in Spain had been ruled by Muslims for over 350 years and scholars had flocked there from all over Islam and a very large library of works covering all these and other subjects had been established.
Fortunately for us the leader of the occupying Christian forces did not go on the rampage burning all of these books – which notably contained translations from Greek into Arabic of parts of the writings of Aristotle.
Islamic scholars had taken the words of the Qu'ran on observation, reason and contemplation to their hearts and starting from the Greek texts made great advances in the sciences from the 7th century onwards. As an example there were discourses written which put forward the ideas of a heliocentric solar system and the elliptical orbits of the planets in the 11th century – 600 years later Galileo was convicted by the Catholic Church of heresy for advancing the same ideas.
To put this in context, at that time my ancestors might have bathed once a year, put disease down to God's wrath and popular learning was actively discouraged outside of religious centres as it could lead to heresy.
All of these views were the exact opposite of the beliefs in the Islamic world.
In the years the Christian occupation of the city scholars from all across Western Europe travelled there and started translating these works from Arabic into Latin. Without this leg up it is very doubtful
The golden age of Islamic scientific expansion started in the 8th century and lasted for 600 years until the rise of certain clerical factions resulted in a terminal decline. Sadly this has been the fate of science at the hands of more than one religion – if empirical evidence contradicts religious scriptures then those responsible for that evidence must be heretics or infidels.
In these times it is good to be reminded of the debt we owe to those early enlightened Islamic scholars, makes a pleasant change from reading about extremist Jihadis.
2 comments:
i was a fulbright scholar last year studying multiculturalism of medieval spain... thanks for your post, most of my research was about granada... never got to visit toledo
anyways, if you like r&g and medieval spain, then you'll probably also dig http://www.gnawledge.com/granadadoaba
keep bloggin! peace
The Reconquest of Andalusia was designed by the Papacy to suppress this knowledge and it was not until the Reformation when Kepler was able to publish "The Secret of the Universe" and "Harmony of the World" overthrowing the false doctrine of the Church. Although this knowledge was not brought into the mainstream of science academia until Issac Newton's time, even Sir Issac feared the consequences of opposing the Church and waited to publish "The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended" posthumously in 1728 severely criticizing almost all ancient and accepted Biblical history.
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