alt Hacker NewsUnfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived.
But I wonder, was some meaning lost from Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin ?
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Rather, thanks to the scholars of the Byzantine Empire, aka the Eastern Roman Empire.
> Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived.
Did not Muslim Scholars originally get the texts from Nestorian and Syriac Christians in the Middle East? Wouldn't there be a good chance of the text surviving in their monasteries?
Greek|Latin -> Arabic -> Latin
His pupil, the English scholastic Daniel of Morley, recorded one of Gerhard's methods[6] in translation: His Mozarabic assistant Ghalib (Latinized Galippus)[7] translated the text orally into medieval Castilian, Gerhard listened and wrote the text down in Latin. In the case of the Almagest, which had been translated from its original language of Ancient Greek first into Syriac, then into Arabic, and which Gerhard translated into Latin via the oral route of Castilian, this long chain of transmission introduced numerous sources of error.
The fall of Rome is 5th century, so it predates Islam, doesn't it?
> Unfortunately few people know without the Muslim Scholars after the fall of Rome, little of the ancient texts would have survived.
I was taught this many times in US schools.
This is not even close to true. The Byzantine Empire was the keeper of all of this western knowledge. The arabs got their texts from them and the Spanish from them and the Byzantines. The arabs did trade texts from India to Europe as well.
I think it's pretty sure some of it was.
Just consider that the X in math is not a latin X but a Greek Χ (chi) :)
Not just ancients' knowledge, algebra comes from a corruption of al-jabr in Musa al Khwarizmi's "al-Kitāb al-Mukhtaṣar fī Ḥisāb al-Jabr wal-Muqābalah". al-Khwarzimi himself got corrupted to algorismus, from which the word algorithm came from. Also, 2/3 of named stars have Arabic-origin names. Arabic influence on medecine and chemistry was significant, the word alcohol is also of Arabic origin, as is Chemistry via al-kimiya, alchemy. And finally, admirals are amir-al-bahr, emirs of the sea.