Concept tag
#translation-movement
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Did the Latin scholastics really receive Aristotle through Arabic?
I guide visitors around Córdoba, where Ibn Rushd and Maimonides were both born. Almost every group wants the same simple story: the Arabs preserved Greek learning during Europe's dark ages and then handed it back, and that is how Europe got Aristotle.…
Started by Rafael Moreno Gálvez4 replies230 views -
Who was Hunayn ibn Ishaq, and what was new about the way he translated?
I sell books in Baghdad, on the street where booksellers have worked for a very long time. Visitors often ask me about the "House of Wisdom" and the translators of the Abbasid age, and I realise I repeat the same few sentences…
Started by Zainab Kadhim4 replies202 views -
Reading group: Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture (1998)
I'm a university librarian in Alexandria, and the question I'm asked most by students is some version of "why did the Abbasids translate the Greeks?" The usual answers are curiosity, or the generosity of an enlightened caliph, or the House of Wisdom.…
Started by Mona Fathy5 replies193 views -
Why the translators skipped Greek tragedy, and what Ibn Rushd made of Aristotle’s Poetics
I guide visitors around Córdoba, and at the statue of Ibn Rushd near the old walls I often tell them about Borges's story "Averroes' Search". Borges imagines the great commentator puzzling over two words in Aristotle's Poetics, "tragedy" and "comedy", for which…
Started by Rafael Moreno Gálvez4 replies164 views -
Not a warehouse: what the Baghdad translators actually did
The usual story says Arabic scholars kept Greek philosophy safe until Europe was ready for it; the translators themselves were doing something far more interesting.
Started by Layla Haddad0 replies138 views