The Role of Arab Scientists in Perserving Greek Science and Knowledge

I would like to discuss the role of Arab scientists in the preservation of Greek sciences and knowledge. Many people living in the 21st century fail to recognize the debt that they owe to these scientists of the Middle Ages. Arab scientists did not just keep alive the fundamentals of Greek science, but enlarged their scope, setting and fortifying their “foundation on which modern science is built.”

It started as early as the 9th century when Caliph Ma’mun, who was the ruler of Baghdad from 813 to 833, built the “House of Wisdom”. It was a learning centre that housed “a library, a translation bureau and a school”. Within a century of its inception, there were several translations of Greek scientific works and knowledge into Arabic. It is said that Caliph Ma’mun sent out several envoys to areas as far as Constantinople to retrieve Greek works.

Throughout the medieval period, Muslim medical scholars translated texts by Hippocrates, Aristotle, Plato, Galen and Dioscorides into Arabic, since it was examined at the time to be “the language of academia”. Thanks to many of these translations, a large proportion of medieval Arabic medicine was founded upon the classical Greek four elements first recognized by Empedocles and the four humours first reported and used by Hippocrates.

The University of Jundi Shapur located in Persia, was responsible for the Syriac translations of many of Galen’s Greek writings. The Syriac translations were then translated into Arabic which became one of the primary influences for Persian scholars such as Rhazes and Avicenna.

There were several important scholars who were crucial in recovering, translating and improving upon the Greek works which they found. Hunayn ibn Ishaq was one of the scholars who had le...

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... made use of the geometry that was borrowed to prove that vision takes place when rays of lights pass from objects to the eye.

The most important application of mathematics was in astronomy since it helped guide them in the desert. The translated works of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy greatly helped in inspiring the Arabs to study astronomy. The Arabs scientists made use of a Greek device known as an astrolabe to help them compute “the position of the stars and the movement of the planets” and also helped them to keep track of time.

The Arab scientists have done a brilliant job of preserving the science and knowledge of the Greeks. The works of scholars such as Al Rhazi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rhusd, etc. helped shape modern science as we know it today and a lot of credit is owed to them. Without them the works of the Greek scholars would probably have been lost forever.