Introduction

Abstract

Arabic science began to flourish about A.D. 800, nearly a century after the great conquests of Islam. Baghdad, the recently founded capital of the empire, became the cultural and intellectual centre of the world and attracted many scholars with different backgrounds. In the process of translation and transmission of older scientific texts, the Arabic language became the vehicle par excellence for scientific and philosophical thought. Thus began what is called the Arabic scientific tradition,¹ i.e. the activity of scholars of different nationalities, who came from various parts of the Muslim world (Persia, Arabia, Syria, etc.), who had different religions (mainly Muslim, but also Christian, Jewish, and others) and who mainly wrote in Arabic. Arabic science flourished with interruptions till ca. 1450. The transmission of Arabic texts or Arabic translations of Greek texts to (Western) Europe was a decisive factor in the development of Latin science and philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which in turn paved the way for the Renaissance in Europe. However, Arabic science remained for the most part unknown in the West.